For The Flip, I need to write both an employee handbook and a volunteer handbook. I need your stories of That One Guy.
My theory is that an awful lot of those manuals exist because of incidents where somebody did something stupid but not covered, so the boss rolled their eyes and said, "Ok, Terry, I'll write it down for next time."
So please give me your best dumbass-colleague stories. Think of them as handbook test cases. I'll open source the results!
Worked support for a white box server maker. Our salespeople had the ability to create BOMs, and the factory would build and ship the product no matter how weird.
A customer called, said they had a problem running an OS.
Found the factory testing records in the database, and from there tried looking up the motherboard model online. It didn't exist!
Figured out: goddamn salesperson raided a stash of one-off engineering prototypes to make product.
Only 100 existed!
Another job, another sales weasel. Also a server manufacturer.
Sales people did not have the ability to just make up some nonsense bill of materials and get factory to make it.
But they were able to make up a list of "replacement parts", and tried to trick factory in assembling into server.
A week later, incredulous customer calls up,
"We ordered a computer. And you sent us a box of parts! Is this a kit?"
Oh, reading your request more carefully...
My examples were not appropriate.
Nah, because this was tech, so nobody ever learned anything, and nobody ever wrote down a rule that covered anything related to a previous mistake!
William Pietri
Muro deGrizeco