What's the dumbest thing you've ever had to do at work?

[Bront]

There is a whiteboard in the office with all the names of the expats working there.

Next to the name is the date of arrival and planned date of departure, and mobile phone number.

This white board is placed in a prominent position for all to see.

These dates have not changed in the three month stint I did there.

In a meeting, I say: "I am leaving Saturday next week, as stated on the white board." to both the immediate managers, and the project manager. I say this because the project manager asked "When are you leaving?". Everyone at the meeting hears and acknowledges this fact.

On the same Saturday I leave (they work Saturdays), the project manager hears second hand that I am leaving that day. He talks to me to confirm. Thereafter I get an irrate email from the two immediate managers stating basically that they have been uninformed of this sudden happening, and I should cancel my trip home. Needless to say, I did not.

Basically, they had failed to inform the customer's management, and were trying to save face. They were used to bullying their fellow countrymen around, and so tried to bully me. This is not atypical behaviour experienced there.

That sounds like standard corperate policy to me.

 

[dogoftheunderworld]

You were promoted away from yourself?

If only that were possible... life would be grand



(... and fixed....)

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I had to perform analysis of a UNIX application to determine the impact it would have on the server. The application was going to run once. I had to execute it multiple times for a worse case scenario. According to the logs, the application executed in uder 50 miliseconds. For the record, the human reaction time is 70 miliseconds. I had to manually time the process to make sure the logs were correct.

My boss was livid with my results because I reported that all times were under a second because I -- along with other human -- was unable to get the exact time. It was recorded as a failure on my part to get the correct data.

The next time I had to do something vaguely similar I made the numbers up. The report got out on time and my boss was much happier.

 

[Hairfoot]

When one administers a laxative suppository to a patient, one asks the patient to exhale, counts to three, and inserts on the "three".

What one does not do is warn the patient it's going in on three, but insert on "two".

 

[ssampier]

The next time I had to do something vaguely similar I made the numbers up. The report got out on time and my boss was much happier.

That's good to know...

I often wonder if budget figures are made the same way.