Not entertained



  • Before I begin, I swear that everything below is the absolute sad truth as far I as I know.

            I was looking for a job about two months ago and I asked my girlfriend if she knew anyone who needed a programmer.  Immediately a friend of her's responded that yes they need a programmer, they needed webstats.  I laughed to myself and figured this was going to be the easiest job possible.  After meeting with the friend (aka the Web designer), I met her boss and they seemed like a cool bunch, somewhat naive on the web industry but very excited and motivated.  Prior to my first real interview I had done as much research as possible to see if I could do it, and yes, yes I could.
         During the interview I did my best to answer every question possible to the best of my knowledge.  I explained that there was really only two ways to do webstats for a website.  On site with server side scripting ( webalizer, awStats, etc.) or with some remote service like google analytics.  Other questions included how I would go about modifying a production level site or one that is already done.  My response was pretty standard, once I got access, the first thing I'd do is backup the entire website then start learning how the site works.  Once I did that, then I'd start making the changes to the site... preferablly on a local testing server.  After the interview,  my girlfriend, my prospective boss, and I walked around and window shopped... mostly my prospective boss flirted with my girlfriend the entire time but I didn't care because I trust her.
          A week or two later, after more correspondance with the Web designer regarding "technical" questions like how to email a form using method="post" action"mailto:".   Honestly I was clueless because I've never needed to know that by the time I got onto the web in 1994-95, CGI was already there for me to do simple stuff like emailing a form's content to another email address.  But the true requirement of a professional in any vocation is being able to find the answer to a question you don't know, quickly.
         Finally came the second interview with my prospective Boss and his partners, this time around the questions were much more critical and well thought out.  I told them flat out my credentials and work experience, my background, and the fact that I have a disability (but not what my disability is).  This was a very good interview because it made me think and actually gave me idea's of certain things I could try.  To my understanding, I was being hired on as a PHP programmer and backend scripts person which is what I prefer.  Yes I can do website's, but I really don't have patience for asthetics or accessibility issues.  They said this would work out fine with the Web designer who would be designing the pages, I'd just be making them go.  What I really liked about the company was their idealism, motivation, and the fact that after lunch we played video games in the arcade of the restuarant.
         After that a meeting was scheduled at my house with the the Web designer and my boss.  Mostly it was a learning experience of working together and moving the website from a temp server to a production server on a hosting service I recommended because they're reliable and unlike most hosting companies, knows what they are doing.  I figured things would work out in the end alright, so I didn't say anything.  From that day, the 27th, to the 31st I spent most of my time from 7-4 working on getting the form handling system up and running and then testing it.  It worked as I had explained, I put input filtering in, but not validation as no one had told me what exactly they wanted.  Later, I would discover I had made a mistake in the form handling that could have allowed XSS abuse, I fixed that immediately and did not count the time I spent fixing it, but I did tell my Boss and the project manager he hired on earlier this month.
          Then this is where things got weird.  The Web designer was heading out for vacation, but she was bringing her laptop with her...so no problem.  Except upon leaving she had problems with her laptop and couldn't connect to the website anymore.  After that I attended a meeting with my boss, the newly hired project manager, a client/co-partner, and one of my bosse's partner's.  They felt the current design was lacking and needed to be redesigned.  I offered to do it, saying I am not good at asthetics but if provided with the graphics and a layout guide, I could build something.  Other things that occured was the project manager laying out near/long term goals like a contact sheet, priorities, and raising important questions.  I felt this addressed my earlier concerns about the departments future as this was someone who was trying to bring charge and direction to the department.  It was decided we would do another meeting at my house with the project manager so I could build the general structure quickly as possible and everyone was on the same page.  My goal was to build a template look & feel for the site that day, and then go from there.  Four hours later, some changes had been made, my boss flirted with my girlfriend some more, and the day was over.  The next morning I got an email with a completely different layout design that was nothing like the previous designs.  The new layout was somewhat difficult in that it required both vertical/horizontal positioning against a static background.  I accomplished that using pure CSS, no tables, and with increasingly less feedback from the project manager/boss.  I think the real downward spike occured on Aug 9th when I had to go away for a meeting from 11am to 6pm.  After that I got two more feedbacks on the site design, but nothing really substantial so that I was in a work stoppage.   The last day I worked was the 15th.   On Aug 20th I got an email from the project manager

    "Didn't <the boss> talk to you the other night? Maybe he didn't relay that we were in a holding pattern." - Yes he did talk to me, but no he did not convey that message.

    Then.

    "...prefers to work on the big picture rather than programming which works well for us since we have you." This was talking about hiring on a Systems analyst and was reassuring to hear about my position.

    BUT.... in the next paragraph

    "What we'd really like to do is get a basic programmer--there are tons of Html/CSS/Xhtml guys out there wanting work--and get you into your niche. <the boss>'s understanding is that you prefer to do stats and all that fun embedded programming for behind the scenes info gathering."

    -  What?  I thought I was being hired on as a programmer, my interview with the company partners, including my boss, had brought up the fact that I was going to have a role in building the department and if I stuck with them and if they were successful I could end up being in charge of my own programming team.

    I freaked out at this point because I really did not know WHAT was going on or what my future with the company was, I showed this to my girlfriend and she was as confused as I was.  I instantly replied back that there was some sort of mistake or misunderstanding, then I called the project manager and she said she was going off the declared ignorance on the matter and said she was going of the boss's word .  I called him the next day, leaving a voice mail asking him to get in contact with me this weekend.  Nothing, no calls, no emails, nothing.

    I waited, then tried again, left a voice mail, no response.  By tuesday afternoon I started looking for a new job because I've been down this road before.  Before I went to sleep that night I sent an email to my boss and his partners saying I did not understand what was going on, I had done what they asked of me, that I felt my position in the company had been erradicated without explanation, and that I was now actively looking for a new job because I was under the assumption that I had been fired/laid off/whatever?

    The response?   They deleted my account on their mail server the next morning without providing me any explanation of what had happened beyond what I can assume.


    What do I assume?
        I really have no idea and I am insulted because of the lack of any definite response, my ex-boss ignoring me from saturday till tuesday, and all of their idealism appearing to be absolute bullshit.  It is in my opinion that they have handled themselves unprofessionally, given me no formal notice of termination, and are acting like children... which is sad because most of them are older then me.   As I said before, I am to old to deal with drama, so where as I really do feel inclined to slam my boss's character, fuck it... I don't have too because the truth of one's character always comes out in the end and those people end up alone in life.



  • <font face="Verdana" size="2">This is the kind of bland story you tell your best friend over a pint and have a good moan about; not something to attempt to share with the rest of the DailyWTF community when there is clearly not a comical or shocking WTF in there at all!

    Who cares if this is a 100% true story, this site is about entertainment and not about producing law documents. If the story was truly shocking and eye opening then perhaps it required the "this is 100000% true" statement at the beginning.

    My advice: find somewhere else to whinge.

    PS I was so pleased to hear about the trust you have for your girlfriend.
    </font>



  • @Walrusman said:

    <font face="Verdana" size="2">
    This is the kind of bland story you tell your best friend over a pint and have a good moan about; not something to attempt to share with the rest of the DailyWTF community when there is clearly not a comical or shocking WTF in there at all!
    </font>


    What a incredible lame answer. Where/who says a WTF has to be funny? Who says a wtf has to be code? This has been discussed earlier.

    @Walrusman said:
    <font face="Verdana" size="2">
    Who cares if this is a 100% true story, this site is about entertainment and not about producing law documents. If the story was truly shocking and eye opening then perhaps it required the "this is 100000% true" statement at the beginning.
    </font>


    I for one care. I think it was a good story, and i have had a similar experience (same kind of work, same kind of people). The morale is clear and simple - get stuff on paper - get a contract before you do anything.
    <font face="Verdana" size="2">
    </font>@Walrusman said:

    <font face="Verdana" size="2">My advice: find somewhere else to whinge.
    </font>


    <font face="Verdana" size="2">If you dont like the post, move on.</font>



  • My point is...we've all had experiences when we've had jobs which havent turned out as we expected like this one but do not feel necessary to make really long posts on this site. I read this non WTF to the end and feel it necessary to comment when my time has been wasted by a non-story. I'm sure other people must agree with me on this one!



  • i agree



  • My money's on...

    Here's my take:

    Your girlfriend probably stopped allowing your boss to flirt with her, so they got rid of you.




  • Yeah it is kind of lame, I kind of left the best parts out.

    They've spent $3-4,000 dollars on a website that is a pamphlet and nothing more.  The web designer built the original site with tables and cell-images to the tune of 48k per load for the layout/template page alone( no flash graphics or anything to justify it) made the page in Dreamweaver, doesn't know what CSS is, I believe the project manager was calling web designers - CSS/HTML/XHTML people - programmers, and the project manager's experience with project management period(.) is as a restuarant manager, and of course my boss was blatantly hitting on my girlfriend every chance he got.



  • This is what the general board is for.



  • I like this shorter version more



  • @Walrusman said:

    <font face="Verdana" size="2">
    Who cares if this is a 100% true story, this site is about entertainment and not about producing law documents.
    </font>

    Well, you only have yourself to blame.  Ion9 made full disclosure when he made the subject line "Not Entertained".

    You read it anyway, and you weren't entertained.  So you got exactly what you got.



  • @marvin_rabbit said:

    @Walrusman said:
    <font face="Verdana" size="2">
    Who cares if this is a 100% true story, this site is about entertainment and not about producing law documents.
    </font>

    Well, you only have yourself to blame.  Ion9 made full disclosure when he made the subject line "Not Entertained".

    You read it anyway, and you weren't entertained.  So you got exactly what you got.

    yep....i found it ok



  • I agree that it's a sucky story. I wouldn't care if it wasn't so long, but after spending so much time reading it I'm kinda pissed that it's so boring.



  • @marvin_rabbit said:

    @Walrusman said:
    <font face="Verdana" size="2">
    Who cares if this is a 100% true story, this site is about entertainment and not about producing law documents.
    </font>

    Well, you only have yourself to blame.  Ion9 made full disclosure when he made the subject line "Not Entertained".

    You read it anyway, and you weren't entertained.  So you got exactly what you got.


    actually, the title made me think there would be a "funny" twist at the end, like the girlfriend just put her friends up to pretending to be looking for a developer. and the punch line would be "i was NOT entertained".




  • @Ion9 said:

    ........
    What do I assume?
        I really have no idea and I am insulted because of the lack of any definite response, my ex-boss ignoring me from saturday till tuesday, and all of their idealism appearing to be absolute bullshit.  It is in my opinion that they have handled themselves unprofessionally, given me no formal notice of termination, and are acting like children.........

    And that's un-professional? Sounds like you got shafted by REAL professionals.

    I agree that this story was an anti-climax. I was hoping, when I read the guff about how your boss was still flirting with your girlfreind, that on the Tuesday, after hearing nothing, you went to the office and found the boss and the PM boning your girlfriend, so you broke their legs, put them on a wooden table, photographed them......

    To be entertaining here, you should probably include sex, violence and some kind of stupid use of tech....

    don't mean to be too rude... but there is a general section.



  • the story itself has some potential.  your problem is in the telling.  This story is more of a 1-2 minute story.  most of the stuff in it is not anything we need or care to know.  In the future just work on trying to compress your stories and leave out unneeded details and I'm sure we'll all enjoy them.



  • @tster said:

    the story itself has some potential.  your problem is in the telling.  This story is more of a 1-2 minute story.  most of the stuff in it is not anything we need or care to know.  In the future just work on trying to compress your stories and leave out unneeded details and I'm sure we'll all enjoy them.


    I agree.  There are some odd things to your story and you could present it well, but you have to remember that "brevity is the soul of wit."  Your second post was better.



  • @Some Idiot wrote the following post at 08-25-2006 8:30 AM said:

    I agree that this story was an anti-climax. I was hoping, when I read the guff about how your boss was still flirting with your girlfreind, that on the Tuesday, after hearing nothing, you went to the office and found the boss and the PM boning your girlfriend, so you broke their legs, put them on a wooden table, photographed them......

    That's something along the lines of what I expected, too...  except, of course, that their pretending to hire him was just to keep him occupied, exactly so he would not go to a particular office at a, well, inconvenient time.  So whatever the boss did with Ion9's girlfriend probably happened long before that Tuesday...



  • While the whole broken legs/table thing sounds good, personally anything short of a plot to overthrow governments or an alien invasion would have been anti-climactic after that lead up.

    To find out that the people the story set up as idiots were in fact just a bit more idiotic isn't the best ending. Still, how many of those replying is disgust/outrage have actually posted WTFs of their own?

    The story rambled, went nowhere, and ended without an ending, but at least it was a try! Hey we never know, there may be a part 2 coming where we find out that his girlfriend has been secretly married to the boss the whole time...



  • Of course, you are going to continue billing them for 8 hours a day until they contact you and officially fire you, right? That's what I do. It's a clause in my contract. If they stop answering my calls I just send them bills until they do.



  • @Cotillion said:

    @tster said:
    the story itself has some potential.  your problem is in the telling.  This story is more of a 1-2 minute story.  most of the stuff in it is not anything we need or care to know.  In the future just work on trying to compress your stories and leave out unneeded details and I'm sure we'll all enjoy them.


    I agree.  There are some odd things to your story and you could present it well, but you have to remember that "brevity is the soul of wit."  Your second post was better.

    Ion9 only needs more practice on writing coherent stories. Ion9, go on writing stories on the 'net, don't pay attention to baseless critics (it wasn't funny!), read stories from authors you like, and your writing will improve and your stories will be better.

    I liked the story, but it is noticeable that Ion9 isn't used to writing.



  • ok the story might not be box office buster or wtf worthy, but...
    what's up with all you people commenting about the guy's girlfriend?? dont you have wives/gf's of your own? want to hear the same things said to you? jeez..


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