• Miss Scarlett (unregistered)

    The senior developer, with the network cable, in the testing room

  • Miss Scarlett (unregistered)

    The Senior Developer, with the network cable in the testing room

  • MiserableOldGit (unregistered)

    I had a client do this exact thing to me, although as I'm in Europe and they're in Southern Africa I simply said (after it took me a whole 15 minutes to plug a network cable back in) "How about I don't tell your SMT, or my SMT, we report back in a week that it was some complicated SNAFU misunderstanding with the requirements? We all say we're happy, both recommend the bill is at cost and split 50/50, and I'm off big game watching for a week. "

    We all had beer and steaks before I left. Probably one the best site visits in history.

  • Anders Wegge (google)

    My guess is that the itemized bill is bowdlerized and used as a justification for billing the customer three times the amount.

  • Sam Judson (unregistered)

    Cathy got reassigned to QA...

  • No Fun (unregistered)

    Ok, so they've told us that the outcome wasn't that neither of them were fired. And they've told us that the outcome wasn't that Mr Green was fired.

    "There are two people in this room. One of them is fired. The one of them who isn't you isn't fired. Any questions?"

  • No Fun (unregistered)

    (Or rather, they haven't explicitly said that Mr Green wasn't fired, but it's TheDailyWTF - no one is ever truly brought to justice...)

  • LCrawford (unregistered)

    It will turn out that Cathy's comment was "Held for moderation", and wasn't actually seen by anyone except Darren and Green's boss before it could be amended and released.

  • El Dorko (unregistered)

    Go Cathy! I'd give her some paid time off - even if I was Mr Green. I do stupid stuff sometimes and my developers get to throw it at my face when I deserve it. I usually don't do the same stupid thing again, and my developers get a bit of satisfaction for being allowed to speak their minds, and everyone wins.

  • Blueplane (unregistered)

    Both side agreed that it was actually Networks fault. Mr Green got a promotion, while Cathy had to attend a seminar on proper behavior in the workplace. Then several working groups were established to come up with new corporate policy on how to wire network equipment, when to escalate issues and to whom and on the appropriate wording in tickets. Also a technical solution to block curse words in internal communications was bought and has already cost the company 10 times as much productivity due to false positives.

  • Da expert (unregistered)

    Career changes for both Mr. Green and Cathy? Cathy obviously is very good at finding hardware bugs, and Mr. Green has a killer instinct for software issues. I think they switched jobs.

  • TH (unregistered)

    Mr Green and Cathy get married?

  • Mr. Nojustice (unregistered)

    "This story might have ended with Mr. Green and Cathy forced into an uneasy truce as the company management decided that they were both too valuable to lose. But that isn’t how this story ended."

    I believe this is a trick. Company management, in a company of sufficient size, is more likely than not to value Mr. Green for the reasons that all large companies have for such idiocies, because surely this is not the first time Mr. Green has displayed such behavior.

    If Ms. Scarlet does not get the sack, which is the most likely outcome (for the same large company reasons), then having to work together closely until the end of time is the next most likely outcome.

  • MiserableOldGit (unregistered)

    Cathy got fired for not turning up to the US client's office on time and/or resigned because they refused to pony up all the extra moolahs for the overtime and additional expenses.

    Mr Green got promoted to head of IT, natch.

  • (nodebb)

    Oh god, this is another https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Attributed-to-Malice, isn't it?

  • Quite (unregistered)

    Several scenarios present themselves:

    1. US company terminates its contract, as this was the last straw. Home company no longer has cash cow and goes belly-up, rendering entire workforce jobless.

    2. Miss Scarlett is fired, but because she is the only one who has a remotely cordial relationship with the US, and the latter are frantic to keep her on board, the US company hire her at 3 times her salary and makes her in charge of in-house development, and also chief liaison officer with Home company, in which she is in the position of directly interacting with Mr. Green.

    3. Mr. Green is kicked upstairs to become both Darren A.'s and the entire QA team's boss.

    4. Darren A. and Miss Scarlett are both fired, and set up their own software company to contract themselves out to Home Company, who have to pay 5x what they were paying for them .

    That's all I can immediately think of that do not end in a mundane "Miss Scarlett and/or Mr. Green is/are fired".

  • SomeDev (unregistered)

    Classic Halloween story :)

    Of course, the real issue here is that GODZILLA showed "funny messages" instead of a descriptive user-friendly error dialog with a hint on how to fix the problem. So, Mr. Green has at least 0.01 of a point here.

    Another point: incompetent QA staff and wrong priority level is the problem, but the real WTF is the handling of an issue by company management. I'm looking at you, Darren. Why GODZILLA's senior dev doesn't have a proper replacement? Why higher-ups were able to turn Cathy back, seemingly, without involving her manager?

  • Reference Desk (unregistered)

    One obvious addition to the tale: Development organization raked over the coals by upper management for "allowing WiFi connectivity to critical asset" laptops. Room rewired with tangles of cat-5 using dodgy Radio Shack crimper; due to substantial unbudgeted cost overruns, Mr Green tasked with purchasing least expensive 24 port switch to connect them all, which he of course finds on clearance at the local surplus shop. Please start the ticking clock for round two of the fiasco....

  • (nodebb)

    Given that it is now 1:45 pm, I would say they missed the "later this morning" target for an update.

    (Yes, I know, time zones and all that, but that's more or less my point, only in reverse.)

  • Chronomium (unregistered)

    You missed the opportunity to be like the Clue movie referenced by the screenshot and write three different full-fledged endings.

  • Dr (unregistered) in reply to Steve_The_Cynic

    As far as I can tell, they are in the USA (hosted in Florida) so it's only ~9:00AM. Yes, I know, it's 5:00PM somewhere...

  • (nodebb) in reply to Chronomium

    write three different full-fledged endings

    Meh. That feels like work. Let's summon Cathy back from an important on-site visit to deal with it…

  • MarkV (unregistered)

    Obviously, whoever obtained the string was fired. Had higher-quality string been used, this whole mess could have been avoided. The person who bought the string probably thought "eh, it's just string - how strong does it need to be?". But that's exactly the sort of short-sighted thinking we can't have in our organization.

  • Burner (unregistered)

    In the end, they all blamed the cleaning company, their janitor broke the string the night before and didn't tell anyone the router was on the floor. Company fired the cleaning service and sued to recover the costs she incurred traveling back and forth.

  • Quite (unregistered) in reply to Burner

    ... nearly as funny as the guy in our office who blew a gasket one morning when his second screen didn't work. He moved heaven and earth by means of a tantrum to get a new one delivered within the hour. When the IT guy showed up with it, he examined the old one. The cleaner had pressed the "off" button the previous night.

  • Johnny (unregistered)

    Please, please please let us know what happened! And if you are still in touch with "Cathy" please tell her that as of this date:

    Cathy Owns The Internet!!!!!!!!

  • Zenith (unregistered)

    The cynic in me says that Cathy ends up fired. I mean, I've been there before. If you work with a stupid person who gets away with being stupid constantly, it's because somebody further up the ladder wants it that way. I know it felt good to put him in his place but it doesn't matter that Cathy is right. "Unprofessional" is just one of many buzzwords that come out to slander folks who don't go along to get along. If she doesn't pay for this, Darren almost certainly will.

    This hits especially close to home because I just got reprimanded for being mean to the H1Bs here. With Russian hacking in the news every single day this year, I've run out of nice ways to recommend some thought, any thought, be put into establishing some security practices.

  • Bruce W (unregistered)

    Cathy got promoted to be the head of QA but Mr. Green was "protected" and she couldn't get rid of him. Wanting to maintain the "quality" in QA she does double work to make up for Mr. Green. The extra hours drives her to resign.

  • Mr. Nojustice (unregistered) in reply to MarkV

    "Obviously, whoever obtained the string was fired. Had higher-quality string been used, this whole mess could have been avoided."

    Okay, this is better than my ending.

  • IP Guru (unregistered)

    Cathy & Mr green get a divorce

  • Mechanical (unregistered)

    Cathy falls asleep heading home on the tube around midnight, is mugged and killed. Mr. Green has a nervous breakdown and is fraught with guilt, finally committing suicide.

    Darren quits.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    Why would a school say they punched a bully in the nose?

  • MarkV (unregistered) in reply to Mr. Nojustice

    Sadly, it turns out that the VP in charge of string DIDN'T get fired. He's probably still there, causing problems all across the organization by buying sub-standard string.

  • 🤷 (unregistered)

    Not having read the conclusion yet, I think this is how it will end: Everyone, except Mr. Green gets fired.

    • Mr. Green obviously doesn't get fired, because he was the one who raised this issue in the first place and made for this error to be fixed. He's the hero of the story. At least in the eyes of the powers that be. Also, Mr. Green was smart enough to shift the blame to Cathy early on.

    But everyone else gets fired:

    • Cathy, because of her "unprofessional behavior and bad language" (keep in mind, saying "Fuck this" can earn you a nice body slam). Also, she's the one to blame anyway. Why does she check stuff in without telling anyone about it? And worst of all, she breaks stuff with her check ins.
    • Darren, because he demanded that Mr. Green should get fired. But he's the hero, remember? You don't demand hero's get fired, ever.
    • The QA manager, because he obviously doesn't have the situation under control.
  • Ulysses (unregistered)

    Ooh, I know how it ends! Cathy gets held for moderation.

  • (nodebb)

    The world burns down. This is the best possible conclusion.

  • Dr. λ the Creator of Variables, Binder of Variables, Applicator of Terms and β-Converter of Redexes (unregistered)

    Cathy is like so empowering and Mr. Green is just a misogynist and I like the image where Cathy is going to kill Mr. Green for being a misogynist. I have like not watched the conclusion yet but I hope it involves Cathy getting mad and killing every man in the building but I know that is not going to happen because womyn are too nice to do that only toxic masculinity causes violence and hate.

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