I am driving this bus over you.



  •  Back in 2001 I was working as a web developer for a .com company.  We were in the middle the .bomb and knew we were in a daily struggle to make the company successful.  We had a good business plan, collecting taxes for cities and counties.  Ultimately the business failed because of too much thinking out of the box.  The company hired a high dollar publicity firm to attempt to get mentions in newspaper and magazine articles but refused to spend any money on real advertising.
    I was developing the tax collecting application for (LARGE_POPULATION_STATE) but kept getting pulled off the project to fix bugs for (LOW_POPULATION_STATE).  This put the large application behind schedule by weeks.  We had a conference call with elected officials on the progress of the large state.  I was a fly on the wall during the meeting, I was not introduced and I never spoke up.  When the project manager told the state officials the project was delayed they pressed for why.  His immediate response was, the "resource" assigned to it was just falling behind.  I was the "resource" they were referring to.  It got worse, It was immediately suggested that the resource should be replaced because they were missing deadlines.  The project manager assured them that the resource was working as hard as he could (me) and that things would be taken care of.  That was not good enough, one of the elected officials said, "I know Mr.DotComBusinessOwner personally, I will call him and take care of the resource problem."  The call ended on the happy note of 'you do what you need to do'.  Immediately after the call I asked the project manager why he didn't tell them the truth that I had been pulled from from their project and that I was not working on it full time.  He explained that is just not how real business was handled and that we could not indicate to them anything less than them being the most important project we had.
    I then asked if he was gong to Mr.DotComBusinessOwner and explain to him the real situation before he received the phone call from the state officials.  His reply, "I can't do that, I have also been telling him that you were working full time on the project.  I have to cover my own ass, sorry!"
    I bit my tongue and plotted my exit.  I quit with no notice one week before the large state project was scheduled to go live.  To my knowledge it never went live as the company went into bankruptcy about two months later.



  • Unprofessional (you could have quit sooner, giving more time to find another person), but IMHO, justified. Sometimes professionalism isn't all it's cracked up to be.

    If you literally screw people over (not just make their lives suck a little bit, but completely screw them), I think a little karmic return is fair.

     



  • @Korova said:

    He explained that is just not how real business was handled and that we could not indicate to them anything less than them being the most important project we had.
    That is how real business is done.  Most clients have no interest in hearing, "Well, we moved some of the people working on your job to something else."

    @Korova said:

    I then asked if he was gong to Mr.DotComBusinessOwner and explain to him the real situation before he received the phone call from the state officials.  His reply, "I can't do that, I have also been telling him that you were working full time on the project.  I have to cover my own ass, sorry!"
    That's just stupid.  You should never be lying to a superior, except maybe for ass-kissing: "That's a nice tie, Mr. Bossington.  I've never seen one before with a woman in a bikini on it.  What's that, you say her breasts light up when you press a button?  Even better!  Oh, and it plays Flight of the Bumblebee, too?  You have the best fashion sense, sir!"



  • Witness the power of whitespace:

    Back in 2001 I was working as a web developer for a .com company.  We were in the middle the .bomb and knew we were in a daily struggle to make the company successful.  We had a good business plan, collecting taxes for cities and counties.  Ultimately the business failed because of too much thinking out of the box.  The company hired a high dollar publicity firm to attempt to get mentions in newspaper and magazine articles but refused to spend any money on real advertising.

    I was developing the tax collecting application for (LARGE_POPULATION_STATE) but kept getting pulled off the project to fix bugs for (LOW_POPULATION_STATE).  This put the large application behind schedule by weeks.  

    We had a conference call with elected officials on the progress of the large state.  I was a fly on the wall during the meeting, I was not introduced and I never spoke up.  When the project manager told the state officials the project was delayed they pressed for why.  His immediate response was, the "resource" assigned to it was just falling behind.  I was the "resource" they were referring to.  

    It got worse, It was immediately suggested that the resource should be replaced because they were missing deadlines.  The project manager assured them that the resource was working as hard as he could (me) and that things would be taken care of.  That was not good enough, one of the elected officials said, "I know Mr.DotComBusinessOwner personally, I will call him and take care of the resource problem."  

    The call ended on the happy note of 'you do what you need to do'.  Immediately after the call I asked the project manager why he didn't tell them the truth that I had been pulled from from their project and that I was not working on it full time.  He explained that is just not how real business was handled and that we could not indicate to them anything less than them being the most important project we had.

    I then asked if he was gong to Mr.DotComBusinessOwner and explain to him the real situation before he received the phone call from the state officials.  

    His reply, "I can't do that, I have also been telling him that you were working full time on the project.  I have to cover my own ass, sorry!"

    I bit my tongue and plotted my exit.  I quit with no notice one week before the large state project was scheduled to go live.  To my knowledge it never went live as the company went into bankruptcy about two months later.

     



  • This story featured somewhat fewer busses than I expected.



  • Well... when you call tech support they don't tell you "We are too bussy to think about your problem, call tomorrow"

    Lying to your boss is a problem though.

    Having ONLY ONE person who knows about a critical project that keeps the company going is an even bigger problem. What if that person leaves 1 week before release? Hell one of the things about documentation is "what if you get hit by a car, can the product still be maintained by the company?"

    And thirdly: If you are the only thing keeping that company alive, they should be kissing your feet and paying you more, not running the risk of you quitting.



  • @Nether said:

    This story featured somewhat fewer busses than I expected.
    Maybe the title is what he said to his manager after he quit, as he drove a bus over him.



  • @Nether said:

    This story featured somewhat fewer busses than I expected.
     

    I imagine it was an over-stretched reference to the expression "To throw someone under the bus", which is in turn just a colorful metaphor for what's more commonly known as scapegoating. Which is also a colorful metaphor, but one with such archaic origins that I really have no idea what it literally means.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @Nether said:

    This story featured somewhat fewer busses than I expected.
    Maybe the title is what he said to his manager after he quit, as he drove a bus over him.

    "I am driving this bus over you", he said as he drove the bus over his manager.

     

    I like it.  It has a very "Peter Chimaera" feel to it.



  • @Zylon said:

    I imagine it was an over-stretched reference to the expression "To throw someone under the bus", which is in turn just a colorful metaphor for what's more commonly known as scapegoating. Which is also a colorful metaphor, but one with such archaic origins that I really have no idea what it literally means.

    The Jews used to chase a goat into the desert to atone for their sins.



  • @antonrojo said:

    Witness the power of whitespace:

    Sir, this will make millions!

    A little bit anal considering this is a forum and not a novelists guild.  I understand frustration over bad grammar, spelling, typos or internet speak, but paragraphs?  That's reaching.  The post was still very readable.

    Perhaps next time you should get out the red pen and dock some marks for not indenting the first word, incorrect margins, no double spacing, and not providing foot notes.



  •  Surely a quick email to the big boss along the lines of "Dear Sir, I am the resource working on the big project. You may receive a call from an irate customer, who thinks I am slacking off and incapable, as his project is behind. The reason the project is behind is because my manager keeps pulling me off onto other projects. Naturally the client is not aware of this, and nor should he be. I just wanted to document the fact that my maanger is trying to shift the blame onto me, when in fact I am merely doing his bidding."

     If you're going to get shafted, you might as well get your end of the story in and shaft the guy right back. And then quit with a week before go-live.



  • @Soviut said:

     

    A little bit anal considering this is a forum and not a novelists guild.  I understand frustration over bad grammar, spelling, typos or internet speak, but paragraphs?  That's reaching.  The post was still very readable.

    Perhaps next time you should get out the red pen and dock some marks for not indenting the first word, incorrect margins, no double spacing, and not providing foot notes.

    Most of us feel that Paragraphing is very useful for getting your point across.  It has nothing to do with being anal, just being able to read the post.  If it looks like a big mess of words and the first sentence or two don't catch me, I'm not going to read the post.  In this case, the first sentence or two caught me, so I read it.  



  • @Soviut said:

    A little bit anal considering this is a forum and not a novelists guild. 
     

    But you could still TRY and not make it horrible couldn't you?

    Using the enter key is really not that hard after all...



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @Soviut said:

    A little bit anal considering this is a forum and not a novelists guild.
     

    But you could still TRY and not make it horrible couldn't you?

    Using the enter key is really not that hard after all...

    I don't know about him, but my Enter key doesn't work in this forum. The only way I can get newlines is using <p> and <br> tags. I'm using Safari 3 at the moment.



  • @Lexarius said:

    I don't know about him, but my Enter key doesn't work in this forum.
     

    There are many ways around this, people have posted. But IE7 and FF3 both work just fine.



  • @dlikhten said:

    Well... when you call tech support they don't tell you "We are too bussy to think about your problem, call tomorrow"

     I'm assuming you're being punny with being too bussy as opposed to being too busy.

     Because when we call our tech support, they EXACTLY tell us, "We are too busy to think about your problem." The difference is that they don't tell us to call tomorrow. Tomorrow would be awfully soon for them to give any thought to our problem.

     

     



  • @sheba said:

     I'm assuming you're being punny
     

    I am assuming you are being 'punny' by resurrecting a dead thread for a non-punny comment.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    I am assuming you are being 'punny' by resurrecting a dead thread for a non-punny comment.
    It wasn't even funny even.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @Lexarius said:

    I don't know about him, but my Enter key doesn't work in this forum.
     

    There are many ways around this, people have posted. But IE7 and FF3 both work just fine.

    ... if you have enabled JavaScript and the forum's WYSIWYG editor. But if you hate one of those (for me it's the latter one), you'll have to insert your own HTML.

    Nonetheless I second the whitespacing thing. I mean, I typed 2 <br /> tags in this short post, it shouldn't be too hard to do on that longer post....



  • OMFG I am not going to argue about this now. You had your chance last month!

    @derula said:

    ...
     

    Thanks for continuing to argue about posts that have been resurrected.

    Is this your first post too?

     



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @derula said:

    ...
     

    Thanks for continuing to argue about posts that have been resurrected.

    Is this your first post too?

     


    Oops, sorry I wasn't aware of this being an old post having been revived for no reason. Sue me.



    ammoQ?



  • @derula said:

    Oops, sorry I wasn't aware of this being an old post having been revived for no reason. Sue me.

    We can sue for that now?



  • @bstorer said:

    We can sue for that now?

    I guess.[citation needed]

    Sorry for stealing, MPS.



  • @bstorer said:

    We can sue for that now?

    I'm going to be rich!  Rich I tell you!

     

    (Oh, wait, he's Rich..)



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Thanks for continuing to argue about posts that have been resurrected.
     

    Oh noes, I am resurrecting this thread over you.

    FWIW, I missed it last month so today was the first time I saw it. I didn't notice the original date until you started bitching about it.




  • @Quinnum said:

    I didn't notice the original date until you started bitching about it.

     

    This is exactly the kind of trolling we don't need here. No one is upset except you. 

    Did you at least have something constructive to say, or did you just see my name and decide to further pollute this thread?



  •  Damnit, where is that picture about old news posts?



  • @Quinnum said:

    FWIW, I missed it last month so today was the first time I saw it. I didn't notice the original date until you started bitching about it.

    Then take your ass through the archives and read the old threads, just don't resurrect them.  I'm supposed to be impressed that you missed this the first time and required it bumped to the top to find it?  Most of us have seen this and don't appreciate having it dredged back up for a "lolz" type comment. 






  • Thread locked. 



  • @ammoQ said:

    Thread locked. 
     

    Liar!



  • @ammoQ said:

    Thread locked. 

    I love that the thread locking feature is as helplessly broken as the rest of Community Server.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Liar!

     

    I can only guess that some other moderator (yes there are some) makes fun of me. 



  • @ammoQ said:

    yes there are some
     

    LIAR!



  • @ammoQ said:

    I can only guess that some other moderator (yes there are some) makes fun of me.

    Tell us this sacreligious moderator who mocks ammoQ and he will be destroyed.

     

    Also: in b4 locked 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Quinnum said:

    FWIW, I missed it last month so today was the first time I saw it. I didn't notice the original date until you started bitching about it.

    Then take your ass through the archives and read the old threads, just don't resurrect them.  I'm supposed to be impressed that you missed this the first time and required it bumped to the top to find it?  Most of us have seen this and don't appreciate having it dredged back up for a "lolz" type comment. 

     

    Have a cry. 

    If it's on the top half of the first page, it's fair game to me. Sorry to disappoint you.

    Strange how none of you seem to complain about that fecking old spectate swamp challenge thread that just won't die though, eh? Even though the original post is, what, probably two months old now ? Oh, sorry, I forgot that making fun of a guy with an obvious mental disorder is fun to you in the peanut gallery.



  • @Quinnum said:

    Oh, sorry, I forgot that making fun of a guy with an obvious mental disorder is fun to you in the peanut gallery.
    Slightly OT, but if Spectate wasn't such a jerk, he wouldn't get picked on.  Yes, it is possible that all of his trollishness is caused by a mental disorder, and should therefore be forgiven.  I believe he still knows the difference between right and wrong, though.  He constantly brags about "riling up the forums" and "gee hawing" everybody.  

    As far as I'm concerned, Spectate could make the teasing stop any time he wants.  Look at this post on another forum, from the supposed mentally crippled Spectate Swamp:

    http://www.biggamehunt.net/forums/archive/o_t__t_11172__start_45__index.html 

    The accusations I made against Greg Gilbertson on HuntShoot.com and other related websites were completely inappropriate and untrue. I apologize to Greg Gilbertson for my comments and I wish him the best !

    Sincerely Doug Pederson

    See, he doesn't HAVE to be annoying.  He doesn't have to be a jerk. He can end this any time he wants, just like he ended his little feud with Greg Gilbertson.  He just chooses not to.

     



  • @Quinnum said:

    Have a cry. 

    If it's on the top half of the first page, it's fair game to me. Sorry to disappoint you.

    Strange how none of you seem to complain about that fecking old spectate swamp challenge thread that just won't die though, eh? Even though the original post is, what, probably two months old now ? Oh, sorry, I forgot that making fun of a guy with an obvious mental disorder is fun to you in the peanut gallery.

    This thread was 2 weeks dead before it was resurrected.  There's no way it was on the front page.  If you missed it before, enjoy reading it later, but don't expect us to be thankful you dragged its rotting corpse back into our homes and places of work.  Also, the SS thread is long played-out.  And if sane people couldn't ease the horrors of mental illness by laughing at it from time-to-time, you would have no friends.



  • @Quinnum said:

    If it's on the top half of the first page, it's fair game to me. Sorry to disappoint you.
     

    WTF? You posted solely to complain about me.

    That isn't 'fair game'. That is trolling.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    This thread was 2 weeks dead before it was resurrected.  There's no way it was on the front page.  If you missed it before, enjoy reading it later, but don't expect us to be thankful you dragged its rotting corpse back into our homes and places of work.  Also, the SS thread is long played-out.  And if sane people couldn't ease the horrors of mental illness by laughing at it from time-to-time, you would have no friends.
     

    I see you have trouble comprehending.

    The thread was already resurrected before I posted to it. Therefore it was on the first page. QED

    Please try to keep up.

     



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    WTF? You posted solely to complain about me.
     

    Maybe so, maybe no.

    And like I just pointed out, the thread was already alive again before I even made any response on it.




  • @Quinnum said:

    I see you have trouble comprehending.

    The thread was already resurrected before I posted to it. Therefore it was on the first page. QED

    Please try to keep up.

     

    I have no such trouble.  I know you did not resurrect it, but you defended the unholy act of giving life to the soul-less corpse of a formerly-living thread.  You could still read it without posting, but you thought it would be fun to jump in and mess with the Big Dogs.  I am one such Big Dog and I am rabies-ing all over you.  The Great and Wise ammoQ even attempted to lock the thread, further proving that it needs to be laid to rest.  Supposedly the way to kill the undead once-and-for-all is to destroy the brainstem, but I'd say most of the folks around here have already gone through such a regiment.  Therefore, we must take it to the next level: more whiny posts from MPS followed by some hilarious, witty flaming from myself.   I'll start:

     

    You, sir, have the brain-AIDS and are a burden to your own culture.  Were you borne of such a low class or did you simply achieve this nadir by consorting with the common folk?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    The Great and Wise ammoQ even attempted to lock the thread, further proving that it needs to be laid to rest. 

    Not so great and wise now, is he? But at least we have the answer to the question "Can ammoQ create a thread even He can't lock?"


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