The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Poor Planning

by Charles Robinson in Feature Articles on 2013-02-25

It began like any other day for Tim. He got his morning coffee and settled in. As he drained the cup, the bright mood drained from the day, as a dark cloud moved in to swallow up the office of the web solutions company. The CEO of Super Mega Foods, their largest client, was on the phone with his CEO. Everything Super Mega Foods did online was coded and built by Tim’s team. Their account generated enough revenue to pay half the IT staff’s salary.

Tim's CEO had a red light over his office door that lit when he was on the phone. It seemed especially bright today, as if burning a hole straight through Tim’s retinas. The longer The Light shone, the more Tim started to worry over his own work for Super Mega Foods. “Did I really get all the database changes synced?” “Have I misread the design specs?” “Do I need to update my resume?”

108 comments - Last comment @ 2013-03-21

Best of Email: Automated Insecurity, Outdated Vacancy, and a Burnt Tongue

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2013-02-20

Automated (In)Security (from Carl Witthoft)

Here's a recent notice from our corporate security department. I'd face-palm except that it might set off the motion-detectors.

139 comments - Last comment @ 2022-05-09

Invasion of the Consultants

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2013-02-19

The tension in the conference room was thicker than black pudding and twice as vile. Marc and his boss, Greg, sat on one side of the table. Across from them were the Consultancy Drones, each in a grey suit with a Bluetooth ear-piece pinned to their ears. At the head of the table sat Judy, the project sponsor. Projected on the wall behind her were Gantt charts and dashboards and metrics.

Much of what was on the screen glowed a baleful red.

114 comments - Last comment @ 2018-03-31

Everybody Out of the (Hiring) Pool

by Dan J. in Feature Articles on 2013-02-14

In mid-2003, David was a naive student in his final year of university. But when he applied to the Belgian government's three new pools of French-language IT candidates (Belgium's other official language being Dutch), he wasn't surprised by the results. After two written tests and an interview for each pool, he was ranked top of the list for the Sysadmin and Programmer pools, and bottom of the list for Project Management.

Merely applying to the pools didn't guarantee anything, though: it only made you eligible for the positions that arose at a variety of government departments. It wasn't until October that David got a bite: L'Agence des Départements was offering an Oracle DBA position. Everything went like clockwork. Hands were shaken, questions were answered, evaluations were evaluated, and David was ranked top man.

111 comments - Last comment @ 2013-02-27

A Burning Sensation

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2013-02-12

Fire The lights went out, and plunged the windowless confines of the IT offices into darkness. Monitors blinked off, fans spun down, hard-drive heads clacked into their safe positions. Not a single idiot light remained standing.

Robert peered into the darkness, looking for his co-workers. The room was abruptly lit by the dreaded, red, emergency light. The office turned into a photographic darkroom- the Darkroom of Death, as shouts and screams erupted from the corridors.

106 comments - Last comment @ 2013-04-25

Purchasing Enterprise Examiner

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2013-02-07

Managing a long supply chain involves keeping thousands of moving parts in lock-step. From purchasing to order management, demand planning to operations, even the smallest hiccup in the chain can have massive impacts.

So when lowly IT drone Tony got a phone call from the VP of Global Purchasing, he knew there was one hell of a hiccup. “We can’t find records for a thousand product codes in the system!” the VP shrieked down the phone. “We can’t place orders if we don’t know what we need! We’re trying to plan our vendor projects for the next quarter and-”

90 comments - Last comment @ 2013-02-24

Human Heat Sink

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2013-02-05

Radiator Andrew nearly choked on his chicken noodle soup. "The research notes are due tonight?" He had been sick with a cold, out of the loop from the rest of the lab for a few days.

"That’s right," Dr. Steinbrenner, his lab mentor, said. "Look, do you want the explanation about the funding committee, the committee that formed the funding committee, the president flying to see his sick daughter--"

149 comments - Last comment @ 2021-01-24

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