The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Classic WTF: The Firing Offense

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2013-12-31

It's been a great year here at The Daily WTF and according to our in-house statisticians, The Firing Offense by Charles Robinson, published on May 21st, was our most popular article in 2013! Enjoy and see you back on January 2nd, 2014.

Egon was fortunate enough to land a front-line support job fresh out of college, but he didn’t enjoy a single minute of it. He continued to slog thru the seven circles of Helldesk for about a year until he found an opportunity to move on. An opening at nearby WTF University’s Electronic Engineering department needed to be filled by a well-rounded IT guy. Egon didn’t think he had much of a chance to land the job, but desperation made him try.

48 comments - Last comment @ 2014-03-04

Classic WTF: A Crony Joke

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2013-12-30

Today's 2013 WTF flashback article is a great one written by Remy Porter back on July 30th and is a perfect example of Hanlon's Razor in action.

Steve set aside his Turkish pizza and borek and answered the phone. He was taking lunch around the corner from the office.

49 comments - Last comment @ 2014-01-11

Classic WTF: A Misleading Memory

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2013-12-27

Today's Best of '13 classic was written by Ellis Morning and originally ran back on March 12th. It shows that one constant remains as true today as it was years ago: the very worst users are sure to call just as you're about to walk out the door. Google+

6:55 PM. Tom's shift ended in precisely five minutes. Neither he nor any of his late-shift copilots were on the phone at the moment, so increasingly carefree banter flowed through an otherwise empty office. His co-workers discussed that new game, Myst, and the latest puzzle that stumped them. They'd keep it up all the way out to their cars.

44 comments - Last comment @ 2014-01-17

Classic WTF: The Biggest Boon-Dongle in the World

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2013-12-26

With the year drawing to a close, it's a great opportunity to review our best articles from 2013. Here's one written by snoofle that was originally published back on January 31st.

Telecommunications manufacturing is a cut-throat business. Features, functionality and hardware need to be added and continuously improved at a frenetic pace in order to stay one step ahead of the competition. Engineers must constantly increase their skills to leverage the latest advances in technology to design and build the best product possible at the lowest cost. Slip up just a little, and it can be a death knell for your company.

20 comments - Last comment @ 2013-12-31

Best of Email: Questionable Maintenance, A Refund on Storage, and More

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2013-12-24

Don't forget, The Daily WTF loves terrible emails. If you have some to share, mail in your mail!

So...When is Maintenance Again? (from Eric J.)

58 comments - Last comment @ 2013-12-31

Click Here to 'Like' Unhandled Exceptions

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-12-20

Alexander writes, "I was searching the web for solutions to some Oracle OCI driver issues when a I received a curious suggestion."

44 comments - Last comment @ 2014-01-09

Don't Wear Out Your Methods

by Mark Bowytz in CodeSOD on 2013-12-18

Each year, whenever summer weather faded and the air started to turn brisk, Craig knew that it could mean only one thing - a new round of interns would be arriving in the department. Sure, some were markedly better than others, but a little bird had mentioned to Craig that his intern-of-the-year actually had some coding experience on his resume!

Maybe this was why Craig let his intern run loose with what he had considered a simple spec. It was meant to be a learning task. You know - get familiar with checking code in and out of source control, explore the code base, and so on. The result? A 2,300 line source file named "Functions".

143 comments - Last comment @ 2013-12-31

Death is NOT an Option

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-12-13

"I work at a large insurance company here in the UK and our life insurance system doesn't allow 'death' to be a valid reason for a member leaving a life insurance policy. Seems to me to be a pretty big oversight," Jimmy D. wrote, "Having raised this with our technical support team I was told there was (and I quote) 'no real benefit' to fixing this so it will be left as-is."

101 comments - Last comment @ 2014-01-03

Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2013-12-06

"Though the scenic route is tempting, I think I'll drive instead of taking the bus," writes Alfred'o.

51 comments - Last comment @ 2021-07-12