The front page



  • @DailyWTF editors said:

    The company that Karl J. works for recently signed a contract with a big North American corporation and everybody’s really excited at the prospect. Practically overnight, their flagship product - a platform-as-a-service solution – would gain a boost of about 40,000 users and an accompanying in-stream of cash too.

    But there was one detail that made everybody, well mostly management, feeling nervous: their client insisted on having 24/7 support. But, you know what? That’s OK! Karl’s employer hired a 3rd party agency to do the grunt work of front-line support and escalate non-trivial issues when they would arise, around the clock.

    Services were purchased and that money was used in turn to purchase even more services to keep it all running smoothly. Unfortunately, the 24/7 support agency proved to be less capable than originally anticipated. Or perhaps somebody forgot to tell them that what they actually did.

    ===========0006401801=================
    Fri 05-Apr-13 01:56p

    NAME:Tim
    COMPANY:abbotsford fire rescue
    PHONE:604-123-4567
    "Based on your service agreement with
    NACK/Fuzzbin, is this a high, medium,
    or low severity? If you are not sure,
    we'll assume its either high or medium
    and contact the on-call now"
    SEVERITY: HIGH[x ] MED [ ] LOW[ ]
    NOTES:198 Emerson St, SomePlace
    Electrical system has been
    compromised. fires from electrical.
    "Thank you for calling an on-call
    technician will contact you as
    soon as possible."


    Message History Account: 63101234
    Taken: Fri 05-Apr-2013 1:54p UN
    Serial#: 1
    ===========0006401801=================

    I read on hoping for an explanation and got... nothing.

    What's the WTF here? I assume we're supposed to be able to decode that shopping-receipt-looking thing, but I can't make heads or tails out of it. (Other than an electrical fire is involved somehow?)

    I don't get it.



  • The fire department called the support agency, who created a ticket in the app developer's system? I think? I was confused too.



  • I think it's that they weren't sure if a fire breaking out was a high or medium a severity event.



  • @nosliwmas said:

    I think it's that they weren't sure if a fire breaking out was a high or medium a severity event.

    I kind of was leaning in that direction, but what does that have to do with "someone forgot to tell the support agency what they actually did" in the intro? I mean it looks like the ticket (or whatever that block of text is) is marked high priority.

    This site has editors, right?


  • Considered Harmful

    I think this is the IT equivalent of dialing 911 for a fire and getting an automated touch tone switchboard. "You have selected Fire. If this fire is located in your fireplace, press 1, if it's a grease fire, press 2, if you are on fire, press 3..."



  • @joe.edwards said:

    I think this is the IT equivalent of dialing 911 for a fire and getting an automated touch tone switchboard. "You have selected Fire. If this fire is located in your fireplace, press 1, if it's a grease fire, press 2, if you are on fire, press 3..."

     

    "You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one."



  • So you think Karl J. works for the fire department? I hadn't even considered that.



  • Yeah... nowhere are any of the details of that WTF made clear.



    Who is paying who for what to happen?

    Who created that ticket, and why?

    Where was the fire?

    What caused the fire?

    What actually happened regarding the extinguishing of the fire, and who did it?

    Why do we care about 40000 more users, sub-contracted SLAs, 3rd parties, or any of that shit...
    what relevance does it have to a stupid fucking fire ticket?







    Are we to understand that a group of firemen failed to respond to an electrical fire because they were busily trying to submit a "we've got an electrical fire to respond to" ticket in some ticketing system?



    Or, are we to understand that they had an electrical fire themselves, and decided to submit a ticket to their IT guys instead of putting that fire out?



    Or, are we to understand that some subcontractor had the fire, and submitted a ticket to the developers instead of calling the fire brigade?



    Or was there some other user of this service that had the fire, didn't call the fire brigade but submitted a ticket to the sub contractor guys who forwarded it on to Karls company, but not before debating its priority?





    WTF ACTUALLY HAPPENED?


  • Considered Harmful

    @blakeyrat said:

    So you think Karl J. works for the fire department? I hadn't even considered that.

    It does say:
    @Front Page Article said:
    COMPANY:abbotsford fire rescue


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    So you think Karl J. works for the fire department? I hadn't even considered that.

    I assumed he was the president's daughter.



  • @joe.edwards said:

    It does say:
    @Front Page Article said:
    COMPANY:abbotsford fire rescue

    Well derp, but since there's at least 3 companies involved here, that doesn't tell us much.

    If you know what the WTF is, then explain it.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    If you know what the WTF is, then explain it.

    Well, I don't know, but I think I managed to figure out much of it on frist reading, as will follow. That said, it's far from being as self-explanatory as the WTF editors thought, and took some effort on my part to work out. That makes it officially lousy writing which should never be out on a public-facing Web page. I suspect that what has happened is that too much detail has been redacted, to the extent that it is now only 'obvious' if have seen the full original submission. Only the WTF editors will be able to say know for sure. >shrug<

    Anyhoo …

    Looks like the OP's company received a ticket from their '24/7 support' with weird, unrelated details. Whether it's a ticket that the support guys have sent to completely the wrong people/company, or it has details that don't relate to an actual incident called in by the OP's company, or it somehow contains details from the '24/7 support' company's test/training database, or any of 101 other reasons, who can say? As blakey says, the whole shebang is completely unclear and well short of the usual minimal standard of writing/editing in the front page stories here. Even knowing why the ticket looks like it came from a ticket printer when presumably (?) it turned up somewhere in the OP's company is another mystery — unless you're telling me that the support folks really have an online ticket printer in the OP's company that is connected direct to the support company's system?



  • It seems pretty clear to me that the third-party support service was either incompetent or overly zealous in the CYA department.  Perhaps 911 shouldn't be outsourced like that.



  • @eViLegion said:

    Are we to understand that a group of firemen failed to respond to an electrical fire because they were busily trying to submit a "we've got an electrical fire to respond to" ticket in some ticketing system?

    Or, are we to understand that they had an electrical fire themselves, and decided to submit a ticket to their IT guys instead of putting that fire out?

    Or, are we to understand that some subcontractor had the fire, and submitted a ticket to the developers instead of calling the fire brigade?

    Or was there some other user of this service that had the fire, didn't call the fire brigade but submitted a ticket to the sub contractor guys who forwarded it on to Karls company, but not before debating its priority?
     

    Obviously the client's site had a fire, and the fire department is calling the number on the "Call for support" sticker affixed to the machine that started the fire.  The horribly outsourced front-line meatbag was too braindead to understand what was going on and filed a incomprehensible ticket.



  • @GrizzlyAdams said:

    Obviously the client's site had a fire, and the fire department is calling the number on the "Call for support" sticker affixed to the machine that started the fire.  The horribly outsourced front-line meatbag was too braindead to understand what was going on and filed a incomprehensible ticket.

    Maybe it's the 2 liters of Thunderbird talking, but I don't understand this any better. Why would the fire department call the company that made the thing that caught on fire, instead of putting it out? Does the FD do this normally? Like, if they come across a burning Chevy Volt on the side of the road, do they call up the White House and open a ticket?



  • @GrizzlyAdams said:

    Obviously...

    I was with you, right up until the word obviously.



  • @eViLegion said:

    @GrizzlyAdams said:
    Obviously...

    I was with you, right up until the word obviously.

    I think after this thread the ONLY thing that's obvious is that there's no obvious explanation for that WTF.



  • @joe.edwards said:

    if you are on fire, press 3..."

    Thanks, now I have to clean my screen.



  • This post tells you what kind of people we are. Most people would have read this and said "Umm, I don't get it." and then move on. Us Software Engineers, however, try hard to glean meaning from even the most obscure requirements; which is sort of what we're doing with this post. Trying to make heads and tails out of a story is just part of our nature.



  • @DrPepper said:

    This post tells you what kind of people we are. Most people would have read this and said "Umm, I don't get it." and then move on. Us Software Engineers, however, try hard to glean meaning from even the most obscure requirements; which is sort of what we're doing with this post. Trying to make heads and tails out of a story is just part of our nature.

    Totally. Real programmers don't really care that much about meaningless things like working hours, salary, and company share price.
    Real programmers just want to 'know'.



  • @joe.edwards said:

    I think this is the IT equivalent of dialing 911 for a fire and getting an automated touch tone switchboard. "You have selected Fire. If this fire is located in your fireplace, press 1, if it's a grease fire, press 2, if you are on fire, press 3..."

     

    "Hello, and welcome to the Springfield Police Department's Rescue Phone. If you know the name of the felony being committed, press one. To chose from a list of felonies, press two. If you are being murdered, or are calling from a rotary phone, please, stay on the line."

     



  • I don't understand it either.

    And clearly from this thread, I'm not the only one.

    TRWTF is a confusing WTF that becomes a WTF itself?



  • @eViLegion said:

    @DrPepper said:
    This post tells you what kind of people we are. Most people would have read this and said "Umm, I don't get it." and then move on. Us Software Engineers, however, try hard to glean meaning from even the most obscure requirements; which is sort of what we're doing with this post. Trying to make heads and tails out of a story is just part of our nature.

    Totally. Real programmers don't really care that much about meaningless things like working hours, salary, and company share price.
    Real programmers just want to 'know'.

    +1


Log in to reply