Job interviews

In our company, due to declining productivity, we decided to hire new workers. Our interview style is a mixture of Joel on software interview guide and Abu Ghraib smart techniques for teaching democracy to non-americans. The most brilliant interviewed revealed his study techniques by several slips, when he was calling SQL joins "joints", to which we reacted by asking to roll and share. Another noticeable interviewed, when asked the most trivial question about Java, told us "well dude, if you wanted a senior guy.. you know, I really like that Java thing.. now I'm working on Access, and that is very hard, too.. the Java thing would be nice.."

So we'll get rid of Gino soon!

Bloody sunday

Last Sunday I had to work, for an electoral application serving real time for a local election; precisely the condition was that customers could call me if they had problems, but the only one that had real problems was myself... . After a big Saturday night, I went to bed at about 3:00 a.m. I was awaken by a silly SMS, at 7.30 in the morning!! A customer wrote that I had to call him to explain some functionality of the product that I had to maintain; I thought that it was a bad joke, maybe of my boss, so I went back to bed, but after 4 minutes he phoned me, and believe me when I say that he didn't know what he was talking about... After 12.00 the customer called me again to signal a single character mistake in the main page of application. 'Okay, no problem, my fault I’ll fix it immediately!' was my answer. After 1 hour CEO sent me an SMS asking me how things were going, and I was proud to tell that I had everything under control. Big Boss phoned me after the CEO’s SMS to ask me the same thing, and I was VERY proud to tell him the same thing. 16.30 Hell on Earth: the customer calls me to signal that the table in the first page of application (yes you got it right, the same page of the wrong little letter!!) was completely, definitely, drastically, dramatically wrong!! OH Geez!! I phoned Big Boss immediately to communicate the situation. The first thing that Big Boss asked me was:" What kind of monitor do you have at home, the one you just got?" after 1 sec of embarrassment I answered "Samsung 2232sw 22''", Big Boss replied: "AHAHAHA I'm in front of a wonderful 245Bw 24 better than yours!! HAHAHA", and hanged up, without giving me any kind of help. At that point I thought : "Please, reboot the universe...". I've tried to download locally the db on the company's laptop, but after some seconds I discovered that someone had changed password in the database settings (I later discovered that it was Boss)... My last chance was to go in the office, phone to Polyglot (another a-bit-off founder of the company) to tell him that a global catastrophe was happening, but he told me:" Don't be afraid, it's regular with that customer! We'll meet in the office later, keep cool! Bye!" Geez, keep cool? I didn't have enough valium. In the meantime my girlfriend had arrived ( yes I've succeeded to bring her back, until then...) but I had to go so I told her an impressive statement: "My dear, I've got to go, its my duty! See you soon!" (I've tried to call her since… no success). I got the car but found a terrible jam on the street. The customer wanted the application fixed by 19:00, and he told me that at 16:30, when he called me again it was 17:50 and I was blocked on the street, so I told them:" No problem my colleagues are working on the problem now! When I arrived in the office it was 18.30 and I was alone, after some minutes Polyglot arrived. I started my Pc, and realized that the network was down!!! Damn!!! The cleaning woman!!! She unplugged something!! I succeeded to put my pc back online with an air cable... It was 18.50 and customer called again, I told them: "Sure, about 20 minutes..." We started to work on the application, after 30 mins nothing was fixed. Finally at 19.45 it was fixed and deployed!!! Whoa!! The customer kept calling, giving me false alerts, just out of fear. I realized that the only thing to do was to wait till client calms down. So I put a Divx "Bourne Supremacy" because I didn't have "Mission impossible", much more appropriate.
At about 9 p.m. Boss called me: "Everything is going fine, ain't it Gino? Just as I told you!". I tried to tell Boss, what had happened, but he had already hanged up, with "Now go home, don't waste our extra-time pay just for sleeping there".

Points of view

Starting some weeks ago I noticed that someone tried again and again to sabotage my pc and my desk, but I couldn't find who was the smart one... Today whe I went to the new toilet on the first floor; from the top I can see my desk, because we work in an openspace, and I noticed Boss getting to my pc, and starting to do a mess on my desk and pc cables! So I realized that the "smart one" is him... I just said "ahem", and he turned round, waved to me friendly as if nothing had happened, and went away saying "Gino, come'on, back to work, you time waster". Now I always check where he is before leaving my desk..

Improving performance

Today I realized for the nth time that my PC is extremely slow, so I tried to set some environment parameters in order to improve performance. The Ide was the big problem: it was so dramatically, obscenely SLOW, requiring a HUGE amount of resources. In the meantime, Boss passes behind me, and starts raving that the problem was the Ide configuration, so if I wanted to resolve something I had to modify that certain configuration file with the right parameters, so he snatched control of my PC and started to modify the configuration file of the Ide (really dangerous if you don't know what are you doing...). After he finished to mess up my Ide's configuration file he told me : "But what the heck! You must have compromised somehow your PC's performance, it still doesn't work. What shit did you put on your PC?! You're a rookie!! Ahaha", and left.

Ok Ok, I can admit that I'm a rookie, but the actual amount of Ram in my PC is 1 GB: I checked this after Boss went away laughing. Geez! Only 1 GB for a Java developer! A secretary has a PC with more memory than me, but the most relevant particular was that when I restarted my Ide I gotthe message:"Error in local thread main please check configuration file an error in configuration."

Mouse' balls

Today, getting back to work after a forced rest, I noticed Gino brushing the desk with the mouse I supplied him some months ago. What the hell is he doing? Aha! probably he is not confortable with a luxury usb optical mouse; it is too light and too rapid in the movement for him; luckily I still have a “hard balled” serial mouse. Lucky Gino!

Human machine interface

When I arrived for the first time in the office they gave me a mouse with left button half broken, but with a bit of practice I succeeded to make it working. After some day Boss came to my Pc, tried to use my mouse and then said: "But what did you do to this mouse it doesn't work!! Holy shit!! " and went away. After him, Big Boss came to my Pc, but when he realized that my mouse didn't work , well he told me:" Hey, but how can you work with this mad thing!! I'll give you a working one now!!", Big Boss seemed very generous with me, but if my old mouse had the left button half broken, my actual mouse has the left button COMPLETELY broken...

Never leave the office. Never!

I just discovered that Gino, during my leave, is using my double monitor, my armchair, and my headphones.

Anyway today I called it to ask how things were going, and first thing he told me “Oh don’t worry about the monitors, I always clean with polish when I’ve finished with them”

Remote Access

When I realized that I had to get some forced days in bed, first thing I called Gino asking for setting-up a remote connection to my office PC.
First he asked me which console I’d like to use, what kind of x terminal and then he tried to convince me to use a text-only terminal session. Good boy! He is a Linux fanatic! After half an hour discussion, I had to call Jack, he told me just “OK”, and in a minute I had my connection.

Now I’m in the bed with three pillows under my knees, three under my back, a pillow on the stomach and my laptop on like the Mayan astronaut. But at least I can mob monitor my slav employees work!

Travelling for work

Today I heard that there was to do some job abroad: I was very happy, because I like very much to travel and if they’d choose me, it would be cool. I have heard that they had gone to California a while ago. Whoa! That would be cool: I love sunny beaches, warm weather, san Francisco to visit.. . In the middle of the afternoon Boss came to my desk, , and started to babble about sacrifice and duty... well, at the end of his boring speech he told me: "Well, I was very generous with you boy! I accept to travel for 12 hours because I'll go to California, and I suggested to the CEO to send you to Malmo, it'll be only about 5 hours of travel! Yep, I'm a very generous man, I know, don't tell me nothing, it's a pleasure for me to be an example for you. See you in two weeks, bye!". The first thing that I started to think was: "Malmo?? Where the hell is Malmo??", after 1 minute of Google Maps I discovered the tragic truth: SWEDEN: the coldest country after North Pole!

Windows

This week I suffered very much cold in the office, I don't know why, but that damn window over my head is always open, and when I say always I mean ALWAYS! For example, when I close it until I stay at my workplace is all ok, but when I go to the toilette when I return I find that demonic window open again!! I don't know who is the author of this joke, but it sure that he knows very well that I hate cold!

Good ideas

I’m still lying in the bed as stockfishes stay; its, of course, Gino’s responsibility.
When he showed me those stupid poses of ugly martial arts, he started begging me to try them: “this is soo healthy for you”. I had no heart to refuse, also because I have to seem ‘illuminated’ I accepted to descend at the same level of my slav employees.

And the consequence is.. today is the tenth day of horrible back pain!

Bohemian rapsody

Yesterday I worked with graphic designer Bohémien. I gave him scripts for the Java application, because I had to make script for Linux and Mac too, and Bohémien works with Mac, like all true graphic designers (Boss says I reason by commonplaces, I wonder why). We tested very hard and after some malfunction I started to hate that creepy Mac shell, I mean, why Mac must have its Java embedded? Why can’t I set my jvm? Linux it's more flexible and powerful; anyway the scripts didn’t work. Today Bohémien arrived in the office and came to me, he had a beautiful Mac Book Pro under his arm, and told me: "I made it!! Your script and my appleScript work perfectly!!". In order to demonstrate me what he said, he opened his Mac, and I started to remember my ex- Mac that I resold on e-bay at half price because no one wanted to buy it. After that sad memento I asked to Bohémien: "Hey! Very beautiful Mac Bohémien, I presume that it's was very expensive to get!" and he answered: "Thanks, but I made a very big deal! I bought it on e-bay: a dumb one sold it for about half-price!! Ah ah ah, what an idiot!!!!".

Gino's contract

When CEO was about to change Gino's long term contract after five days, she asked me what I thought about it: "Well", I said, "it won't make any difference to Gino; he is surely not just going to buy a house right now, so just go with it".

Real IT manager

I must say that there is a vague resemblance.

Some work for Gino's

Software documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing. (Anonymous.)

Following this deep and wise remark, I gave Gino some documentation to write.

The man in front of me

Today after lunch, while I was trying to resell my new MacBook Pro on e-bay, I noticed a new 22'' inch monitor 16:10 inside its box. I started to think about my 'new' monitor, and I asked my colleague in front of me why that monitor was lying there in the corner, my colleague answered me that it had been there for a month, and it was destined to him, but he didn't like dual monitors, so he left it there. So, when I just formed in my mind the thougth “I’ll take it”, Boss passed by and said in a whisper “forget it”.

Shell is the law

Boss called me for a new task other day (yes, I have an incredible number of assignments), he told me that I had to do some scripting for an Java application to be installed on Linux. Wow, it's the most interesting task for now. I started coding immediately. After some tests, I gave all to Boss for the final verdict. Man, you can't understand my surprise when I heard Boss saying:" Damn: where are the damned .bat files???". I tried to explain Boss that under Linux there are no .bat files, and after a while he seemed to get it, came to my PC, where I’m running my most loved Linux GUI, and said: "Ok, I perfectly understand that!! Then, where is the application icon? And where is the control panel, the myComputer icon? And what is this wallpaper crap? It seems a dog's shit!!".

Murphy's law

Today CEO came to my desk (and this usually is a bad thing), and she told me that for the good of Company they had to change my contract with a limited time one... damn, I must accept for the good of Company... Man! I've got a new definition of 'long term contract', 5 days!! Murphy's law came to my mind:"If anything can go wrong, it will, and usually at the most inopportune moment". After this 'good' news, I started to think about my new notebook, my new car, but the most terrible thing was the house, telling my fiancée and above all, I had to return the diamond ring... After a few minutes Boss got to my desk and told me: "I inform you that you have been chosen for an important task, software support for the next election, and you must work unpaid for a few Saturdays and Sundays monitoring the application. Remember: it's a very critical application. Have a nice day!". Only in that moment I remembered the complete Murphy's law:"If anything can go wrong, it will, and usually at the most inopportune moment, and in the WORST way...".

The Contract!

Wow!! It's amazing: they got me a long term contract! I got so happy, I invited all my friend for a three days (and night) party, free food and beer for everyone. I also went to order my new notebook, a marvelous Mac Book Pro. While I was at it, when I went to get my new Mac I fixed my new Car. But the most important thing that I can do now is to buying a house for me and my fiancée so we can get married!! Wow I'm so excited, that Boss can now mob me as much as he wants, but he won’t ruin my good mod!!! Great, great CEO.

Joy of living - Gino's quarterly review

At work life can get really hard at times (so that's why I take days off so frequently, particularly Fridays). But there is one thing, one great experience that can immediately make me feel good and love my workplace: it is when I think of Gino's quarterly review. It was such a complete and unworsenable disaster, that I just can't stop laughing when I racall it. Beautiful, just beautiful.

Shortest long-term contract ever

About a week ago Gino ended his trial period, and he got a long term contract. Not because we wanted to give it to him, but purely by mistake. He seemed very happy about it, so I got into action, called the HR dept. and made them close the long term contract and issue a short and low pay contract in place. Gino could easily make the company pay a huge amount of money for the contract breach, but of course we easily made him believe that the change was in his favour, even the lowering of wage.

Our new class header

/**
* @author Jack Boss
* @problems, complaints, insults Gino Employee
* write freely to gino@mostmobbed.anonym_.com
*/

Faking work

Recently Gino had to provide some Word documentation, and he seemed to be working on it, but the bandwidth usage (I always monitor what he's doing) showed he was contnuously surfing on the web.


But then I found out how he was doing that: he was using this software which fakes word usage, but actually you are surfing, and with a simple F1 press you can switch between the browser (real) and a wordlike appearance:
It even fakes the app bar appearance:

Quarterly review

In our company every three months there's a quarterly review, the last one was very interesting, in particular for Boss.
It started very seriously, in fact it was quite boring. All my colleagues were very serious and Boss and Big Boss looked very interested. When my turn to speak arrived, Boss started to make loud jokes with Big Boss, but I didn't get distracted from the review. As I started to speak, the noise produced by Boss kept growing. When I got to about half way through, Boss obliged me to speak about a determinate section of my work; I complied, and this was a big mistake. Boss has modified some code on that section (introducing several bugs) and all the application started to crash, and with the flow of on-screen exceptions Boss and Big Boss started to laugh more and more, but I kept going and finished it. So at the end Boss and Big Boss were rolling with laughter, and they didn’t get a thing of my technical explanations. The strange thing was that after me when another colleague started her review, they were again very serious and pleased. Sometimes I think that Boss and Big Boss don't understand my work, they just don’t get it, so that’s why they start to make jokes on me and my work..

Ridicolous martial artist

Today when Boss arrived in the office we started to speak about a most important stage of martial arts which I'm attending tomorrow. He started making fun of me and my "ridiculous hobby", and after that he started moving in strange senseless and compulsive mode, while telling me:"This is martial arts!". After a while he stopped, and went back to his workstation; I turned round, and saw Catherine (our CEO) watching amazed. She said nothing, and went away. Sometimes I wonder whether Boss is going a bit crazy.

Urban ninja - back blocked

So today I passed by in the office and there was Gino. He was going to a ridicolous martial art training, so I shown him some basic movements, as he seemed to be lacking even the basics of the art. But something in my back started hurting, and in order not to depress Gino, I pretended that I was fine. Now I'm at home, blocked in bed by back pain. There's something cursed about that guy.

Censorship

The CEO called me again this morning, this time less happy: she overheard the "dog shit" code name, and she asked me about this "idiotic idea", which lowers morale, and where it comes from. I hinted at Gino's, and she said "Ah: that Italian man", probably implying that being italian he must have some macho personality problems. Then she told me about strange things happening recently, like she found a working cellular phone under her car in the parking lot, which she has been using since.
I told her that I will act immediately to make employees use a proper terminology. So I'm so scared now that even these posts will be censored from now on. Holy s.!

Dalmata is the name

The CEO just called; when I heard it was her, I started to panic: with this Gino business, she was going to ask about productivity. But instead she was calm and happy, and said how much he likes the "dalmata" name I proposed, and that she heard about the wiki initiative, which was good, and that I seemed to have become the drive of innovation; I thanked and told her that these things come just natural to me, so I deserved no reward. She answered that a raise was forthcoming.

New project for Gino

We've given Gino a new assignment: create a customized version of a Linux O.S. that should run on his new cell phone. Now for this kind of work the name is essential, so I took a few days off in order to meditate and create a good name. So now I'm back and the name is "dog shit", which is inspired by the logo of Gino's most loved Linux'distribution. I was going to tell Gino, when he came to me with the silly name of "dalmata". So just to make him happy, we'll call it internally "dog shit", but the official name will be "dalmata".

Cellphone part 3 of 3

Today in the office while searching for a new cell on the web, Boss came and told me that he wanted to apologize for the accident with my cell, so he wanted to repay me somehow. He started to speak about my new cellphone that he had bought me, a cool, very cool smart phone! So I thought:" Oh jeez! He's great, he got me an IPhone Touch! Cool.". After some minutes he started to babble about a phantom open source phone, telling me:"I thought that it would be perfect for you, because I know that you like that Linux shit...".

Cellphone part 2 of 3

Three days ago I called Boss to show him my work, well I hate to admit that sometimes he is quite fun, but he doesn't know when to stop with his damned jokes... When he got to my PC he started to comment my code with "But what the hell is this shit!", and after that he took my cellphone (it was on my table as usual) and pretended to throw it away; the very problem was that the cell flew away through the window for real. Well, at that point Boss REALIZED that that was just too much, so he told me: "Hey man, I didn't want to throw away the cell for real! Come on, let's go out for a coffee". Okay, okay, I saw he was sincere, so I accepted the offer. When we went to pay the coffee ,Boss said:" Damned!! I forgot my wallet, can you pay for me?".

A great chance for learning

I’ve recently learned about the new Sun’s open source phone . So I thougth that it would be a unique opportunity for our developers to have just that thing to play around with, develop on it, and maybe we’ll use it as a platform to sell more software. I've ordered one for Gino.

Hampering productivity again: the damned wiki

Some days ago I was meditating about how to improve the company’s communication, and while Gino was babbling about some silly ideas as usual, I was struck with the idea of using a wiki for just that. I told Gino, and he was immediately enthusiastic at the idea. That is usually a sign that the idea is not so good after all. Anyway we started transferring information from comfortable word documents to ugly web pages, and we realized progressively that it was not such a good idea. It’s Gino’s touch: whatever he likes, rottens quickly.

Cellphone part 1 of 3

Last week when I arrived in the office I put my cell on my table as usual. After some hours of work Boss passed behind me (potentially dangerous to have Boss behind you), saw my cell and without saying anything, took it and started to frenetically open and close the slide. I continued working, thinking that he was smart enough to stop before breaking the phone. After a while, he put the cell back on the table and went away, without saying anything. In the afternoon I received an sms, I tried to open my cell's slide but it didn't work anymore.

A good idea

Some week ago I heard Boss speak with one colleague about how to share company's knowledge with all workers, and when Boss spoke about an Excel sheet I felt horrified!! Geez, we are in 2008's not in the 80's!! So I couldn't help but going to Boss and I saying: 'Boss, back to the future: for our purposes we can use a wiki!! More powerful, more flexible and free!'. Boss watched me for 5 secs and answered me that a wiki was too much expensive in human effort for maintenance, so nothing to do with that creepy thing! After 1 hour of discussion with The Big Boss, Boss said:' Ok! I have a great idea! We're going to use a Wiki to share company's knowledge!'.

'New' Monitor

Today I arrived in the office and saw Boss with two monitors: I thougth that it was a great improvement for developer's productivity, but in the meanwhile I noticed that the 'new' additional monitor was mine!! I thought that finally I could change my monitor for a new one. Infact Boss has ordered to get me a new monitor, almost, actually.

Hampering productivity

Gino actually is master of hampering productivity of several people: not only he doesn't solve a single issue (always surfing on silly sites: see this), but he continually breaks up mine and others concentration with trivial questions.

Maybe it is a trial I deserved in some previous life.

Double monitors

Today I decided that I needed two monitors to work more effectively. So I went to Gino's, took his, and ordered our secretary to supply him with a better one. So everyone is happier!

WallPaper

Today I asked Boss an hint on a problem, after 40 mins wait he answered me that he was working on something very important (probably he was posting on some stupid blog), got to my PC, and his only contribution was to comment my wallpaper: "Man! What shit did you put on your desktop! Remove that thing!"; after that he went away without telling me anything useful about my problem.

Speak to the air

Sometimes I try to speak to Boss about my work, but it is very hard, because he ignores me whatever I tell him. Last time I spoke him but apparently he didn't hear me, so I continued talking louder and louder, Boss brought out his sun glasses, put them on the rear of his head and told me:" Now talk to HIM"

Having lunch with Boss

Yesterday I've had lunch with Boss and my colleagues. They are very sad because we can't tell anything funny because the funniest thing is speaking about the Boss... So I decided to rise the situation with a little funny story, all my colleagues laughed a lot, but Boss didn't. Guys, that man doesn't have any sense of humor.

Subscription

When my photo went on company's official site I found my boss that was trying to submit my photo on a gay dating site (I'm hetero, for the moment). He told me:" I'm trying to improve your personal life..."

Today Jack is drunk at work

Just imagine the code he's writing...

Having lunch with Gino

Today we had the unfortunate idea of having lunch with Gino. He took center stage, and while we were trying to have lunch, he started telling us his adventures in the toilet, when he was thinking about me (???) and then suddenly the light went out: as he said "in those cases, you need to know your body very well".

Keeping sane

Gino, our new employee, talks so much that we had to find a strategy to defend our sanity. So we regularly ignore him when he talks and talks, by turning away from him when he is in the middle of his speech. There seems to be no way to stop him.

"People at their workspaces tend to look away from you when you walk by. (They’re afraid you’ll come over and bend their ear for 10 minutes.)": that's exactly him.

Found out

I found out that my employee was posting to blogs instead of working. But I told him that it was fine, as it doesn't really make any difference in his "productivity" anyway.

Zen training

Today I benefited my new employee of some zen concentration training: while I was stimulating his body with a soft ball, he had to keep writing code. Was quite fun, at least for me.

Beginning work: as football target

After a first few days at work, my boss decided that it was time for some fun: he started using me as target for fottball training (in the office), while I had to keep on working at the PC.