February 14, 2003

The guy who used to work here

We all know stories about "the guy who used to work here," right? There's the guy who was caught posting internal information on Internet message boards and was fired. There's the guy from India who had a really unfortunate name (a synonym for "crap"). But for me, there's the guy who used to have my job. Well, actually, it was a girl and then a guy who had my job, but who's counting.

By all accounts, the girl who was here was not bad at the job. She left before I was hired, so I can't speak from experience, except what I've seen of her legacy. She did some good stuff, and wrote some tools that I use. But she also left some things in a lousy state. Next came the guy. He did some downright boneheaded things, before he was laid off, but then I had the responsibility to either fix them or live with them.

I'm talking about all this because today we had a potential flare up of a system that I think both of them had a hand in setting up. This system wasn't put together in the best way. If you read the manual for the software that's installed, it very explicitely says "Do not do this." Of course they did it. I'm not sure if the girl who used to work here is responsible or not, and if not, I apologize, but hey she's not here and she probably doesn't read this webpage anyway. Now the guy on the other hand, I know he's partly responsible for making this system crippled, but I'm sure he doesn't care much these days either. After all, he got laid off and I didn't.

PFFT! to the guys who used to work here.

Published: February 14, 2003
Editor: stacy