• Frist (unregistered)

    Frist

  • Sahir Siddiqui (unregistered)

    Good one!

  • Someone (unregistered)

    I certainly have never used a website in my life.

    You'd think they could just show him a log of all the payments. Who knows, maybe that's what happened.

  • JG (unregistered)

    TRWTF was the mayor keeping his promises :-)

  • Paul (unregistered)

    $ 2000 a month is cheaper than hiring a person to do it? I shudder to think what that guy is earning... Not sure what the breakdown is where the story takes place, but over here an employee costs roughly twice their monthly gross salary, which would mean this guy makes less than $ 1000 a month, or $ 5,77 per hour.

    US Federal rate is $ 7,25 per hour, in the Netherlands it's roughly $ 10, so my guess is Virgil is either lying through his teeth or very bad at math...

  • JustSomeDudette (unregistered)

    You can't leave it there, what happen next? Did Virgil get his comeuppence? Rachel get a new job and leave Virgil to his Luddite ways? I need answers, preferably happy ones but this is TDWFT so probably not.

  • Pae (unregistered)

    I was gonna be first, but my bus was late.

  • Peter Bouillon (unregistered) in reply to Paul

    Much more likely: That person has already been on the payroll since aeons and can't really be fired any more. Since he's there anyway, the company might as well put him to work. Processing the internet transactions is one of the chores they've found for him.

  • LCrawford (unregistered) in reply to Paul

    Since they have 72 hours to process a transaction, Coke Glasses only needs to come in once or twice a week. Let's say he came in for 2 8-hour days at $10/hr (a high rate for that job). That would be $640/month. Since he is part time, there are no additional benefits.

  • foxyshadis (unregistered) in reply to Paul

    The idea is that anyone worth their salt could slap together a kludge to bridge the gap between information received, payment processor, and internal database, if the vendor priced themselves out of the market. (I've been part of several dev teams that reinvented the wheel for this very reason.) It shouldn't take more than a few hours to a few days once, then it can be redone as necessary as time permits.

  • markbark (unregistered)

    There IS a solution for the Virgils of the world. It involves a baseball bat, a roll of carpet and the schedule for any large concrete pours in the area......

  • ModernCEO (unregistered)

    TRWTF is why he hadn't outsourced the basement guy. You could have hired someone in China or India to do that job 24/7 near instantaneously for way less than either employing someone in the basement or $2k/mo licensing!

  • D-Coder (unregistered) in reply to ModernCEO

    ModernCEO (unregistered) 2017-05-23 sez:

    "TRWTF is why he hadn't outsourced the basement guy. You could have hired someone in China or India to do that job 24/7 near instantaneously for way less than either employing someone in the basement or $2k/mo licensing!"

    And since they get to see all the credit card numbers, they'd probably be happy to do it for free.

  • DrPepper (unregistered)

    Sometimes it is cheaper to hire a person than to implement a software solution. You have to take everything into account; and if there really are only a few transactions a day, it probably makes sense to hire a college student or a "basement guy". However, if word got out that the "basement guy" got access to credit card information, in the clear, more than one person is going to lose their job.

  • INEEDTOKNOW (unregistered)

    Someone needs to give us an update on this.. what happened.. did they ever fix the system.

  • Phone Guy (unregistered)

    There's also the whole "printouts of CC#s all over the place" which is not really a good idea.

  • Red Shred (unregistered) in reply to Phone Guy

    "[...] with coke-bottle glasses, an antique continuous feed printer, a red document shredder [...]"

    He probably had to shred the CC#s as soon as he had entered them.

    Still a stupid idea, but at least they had a red shredder. (The red ones are the best, you know...)

  • Rainbows and Unicorns (unregistered)

    Why did I suddenly get a rainbows and unicorns added counter? I have never seen this before. I made a lot of rainbows and unicorns and it seemed to deface the article as well. Thought I'd find someone commenting on that in here...the fact that I didn't has me concerned.

  • Rainbows and Unicorns (unregistered) in reply to Rainbows and Unicorns

    Nevermind, I guess this is a feature of certain articles here that I just hadn't run into before. I found the cornify_add call that I apparently accidentally clicked the first time. Interesting....

  • nb (unregistered) in reply to LCrawford

    "Since they have 72 hours to process a transaction, Coke Glasses only needs to come in once or twice a week. Let's say he came in for 2 8-hour days at $10/hr (a high rate for that job). That would be $640/month. Since he is part time, there are no additional benefits."

    Or, he's GFT making $8K/mo from seniority and still only has to come in two to three times a week, thus making his effective wage some absurdly high number.

  • Carl Witthoft (google)

    <quote> ... had nestled into his IT director position like a tick </quote>

    toc

    Problem solved.

  • RichP (unregistered) in reply to Red Shred

    The red shredder matches the swingline stapler. Virgil knows better than to fire Basement Guy, because that leads to the entire office burning down.

  • Bruce W (unregistered) in reply to Red Shred

    at least they had a red shredder. (The red ones are the best, you know...)

    Just wait until "Basement Guy" takes a stack of CC number print outs, runs up a bunch of charges, burns down the building, and relocates to a beach in Belize - taking the red shredder with him.

  • Mistakes in an article about mistakes (unregistered) in reply to Paul

    $2000/mo X 12 months = $24,000 Full time wage for any IT person in the US better be at least $34,000 (ref: simplyhired.com) FlashCard is 10K cheaper than having a human do it. Assuming Rachel or one or 6 DRs can manage the system.

  • ET (unregistered)

    That is so far out of PCI compliance that it makes me sweat

  • ET (unregistered) in reply to JustSomeDudette

    Indeed. I want my schaedenfreude

  • Gene Wirchenko (unregistered)

    Virgil appears to be the type who will complain about his precious budget regardless of circumstances, and he is very penny proud and pound foolish in this case.

  • lolzorcat (unregistered)

    Yea and the "FlashCard" is the Compass that they just installed allowing you to swipe them to pay. Before that it was the UPass, which is what the author is talking about with cardboard showing to bus driver.

    I don't remember the mayor's name anymore though

  • (nodebb)

    So this is why it isn't instant to recharge my Go Card online? Have to wait for Coke Glasses guy to enter my credit card into the system!

  • doconnor (unregistered)

    The WTF filled Presto transit cards take upto 24 hours to process online payments. This is because the value is stored on the card and if you are out in the bonnies on a GO bus the terminal may not have been in contact with the central server for hours, so it would not know to apply the payment to the card. Payments at kiosks are applied immediately.

  • GAGF (unregistered) in reply to Frist

    F#$% Wit

  • Olivier (unregistered) in reply to Phone Guy

    That is not the guy in the basement that I would be most concerned with but the fact that the CC numbers are saved in the log file (and eventually the printing process that can be store and forward, leaving another stored copy of the CC number).

  • TheCommoner282 (github)

    Okay, they hired a guy in a basement who literally gets the printout of a csv-sheet. Whipping out a program that replaces this guy should be easy enough for the lowest under the linux administrators with nothing more than a bash script. If you had someone there that really can program, who they obviously had, they could have saved a lot of money. Is there any regulation stating that I can circumnavigate buying the e-commerce program by hiring a person, but not by writing my own small app?

  • rogiertje (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the previous mayor thinking the bus service would get better if he cut their funding?

  • sb (unregistered)

    Was the 16 bit garage management software called "Angus" by any chance?

  • WonkoTheSane (unregistered) in reply to Paul

    "$ 2000 a month is cheaper than hiring a person to do it? I shudder to think what that guy is earning... Not sure what the breakdown is where the story takes place, but over here an employee costs roughly twice their monthly gross salary, which would mean this guy makes less than $ 1000 a month, or $ 5,77 per hour."

    Not necessarily, depends how they budget for staff and software - many large companies budget for staff and expenses differently so the money comes from different pots.

  • WonkoTheSane (unregistered) in reply to Paul

    "$ 2000 a month is cheaper than hiring a person to do it? I shudder to think what that guy is earning... Not sure what the breakdown is where the story takes place, but over here an employee costs roughly twice their monthly gross salary, which would mean this guy makes less than $ 1000 a month, or $ 5,77 per hour."

    Not necessarily, depends how they budget for staff and software - many large companies budget for staff and expenses differently so the money comes from different pots.

  • Hannes (unregistered)

    This whole "Interwebs" or what's it called, is just a fad anyway.

  • John Craven (google)

    Isn't it illegal to store credit card information like that? I mean, I think we can all agree that it's unethical as hell...

  • Ben (unregistered)

    I actually felt pain in my chest when I read the last paragraph.

  • Torontonian (unregistered)

    The circumstances of what was going on in this city around transit sound a lot like what was going on when Mayor Ford of Toronto was in office just sayin... Only he didn't drop out and the scandals continued while he was in office. Probably not about him, but either that or this is the status quo way transit is run everywhere...

  • Gene Wirchenko (unregistered) in reply to WonkoTheSane

    No, it does cost more. The different pots do not stop it from costing more. It is more the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

  • Bus Passenger (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that it takes 6 people to maintain a bus company website.

    Virgil has a point about the budget.

  • darkmage0707077 (unregistered)

    Putting aside his obvious pettiness, I'll bet a dollar that Virgil's performance bonus (or similar) is tied to how much his department saves on costs annually, and that the main way they track that is by looking at the most direct numbers: his annual budget expenditure.

    You want to get him to actually support the website properly? Get more senior people to change the pay structure so that it's based on something besides cost savings (number of people signed up, consumer satisfaction metrics, revenue increase percent, etc), then wait for him to realize it.

    But this is a government-subsidized company, so the likelihood of that happening to someone so senior and "vital" is next to none. Better keep that resume polished and get out before they inevitably look for the "cause of the absurdly long website times"...

  • MaxArt (unregistered)

    Everything would cost less if Virgil was fired, simply put.

  • TopCod3r's Cousin (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that she doesn't get free bus travel as an employee.

  • Jeannie (unregistered)

    I hope you don't always have stories about awful older employees. Some of us love tech and have a great work ethic. We are not all Virgils. I've been having a tough time getting past hipster interviewers to land a coding job.

  • Gene Wirchenko (unregistered) in reply to TopCod3r's Cousin

    I do not agree with that. Employees having to go through the same procedure as regular customers means that they know what the customers are going through. Would Rachel have known about the delay problem if she had not faced it herself? Maybe, but it is a lot less likely.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to doconnor

    I assume it wasn't event encrypted and/or there was no system in place to prevent card duping?

  • QBall (unregistered) in reply to rogiertje

    Typical Republican "logic"

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