Break from the norm

As many of you have seen, I usually post about tech related items. This time I am breaking from that because I have a personal rant. It’s something that eats at me and I have a hard time handling it.

What bothers me to no end is when I’m asked to do something and then criticized for not doing the way the requester thinks it should have been done. I’m not talking about someone that says “Hey, can you do X job this way for me?”. I’m talking about the people that ask me to do something, leave it up to me to figure out how to do it and then gripe about how I did it and that I should have done it another way.

I’ve actually had a boss threaten to fire me because I didn’t setup a clustered MS SQL 2000 server the way he thought it should be done (even though his way wouldn’t work). He just told me to cluster the server using the existing Compaq servers and a single external array. It took me 3 days, because I couldn’t interrupt normal network operations (the plant ran 20 hours/day), but I got it done and it worked flawlessly. The boss then came in and flew off the handle because I did it “only like a geek would” (?) and made it impossible for him to administer the way he thought he could. This is a man that had 0 (zero, zip, nada) database experience so how did he expect to be able to admin it? That was my job and I was damn good at it.

What bothers me the most about this pet peeve is the fact that I have a hard time getting over it. It could be weeks before I cool off after someone pulling that move. I don’t care if they have insight on how I could have done it better, but to completely down everything I did? That’s just unacceptable.

That’s the end of my rant. Stay tuned for further tech news that is of actual interest.

Speak when you are angry–and you will make the best speech you’ll ever regret. - Laurence J. Peter

17.Apr.05 Life