kengr

Posted by Jane Bailey

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-logs-don-t-lie

She'd resisted the call for years. As a senior developer, Makoto knew how the story ended: one day, she'd be drafted into the ranks of the manager, forswearing her true love webdev. When her boss was sacked unexpectedly, mere weeks after the most senior dev quit, she looked around and realized she was holding the short straw. She was the most senior. This is her story.

As she settled into her new responsibilities, Makoto started coming in earlier and earlier in the hopes of getting some development work done. As such, she started to get accustomed to the rhythm of the morning shift, before most devs had rolled out of bed, but after the night shift ops guys had gone home.

Bad sign number 1: the CEO wandering past, looking a bit lost and vaguely concerned.

"Can I help you?" Makoto asked, putting down her breakfast pastry.

Bad sign number 2 was his reply: "Does the Internet look down to you?"

Makoto quickly pulled up her favorite Internet test site, /r/aww, to verify that she still had connectivity. "Seems all right to me."

"Well, I can't get online."

Webdev-Makoto would've shrugged and thought, Not my circus. Manager-Makoto forced a grin onto her face and said, "I'll get my guys on that."

"Thanks, you're a real champ." Satisfied, the CEO wandered back to whatever it was he did all day, leaving Makoto to explain a problem she wasn't experiencing to guys way more qualified to work on this than she was.

Hoping to explain the discrepancy, she unplugged her laptop. This time, the adorable kittens failed to load.

"Success!" she told the empty office. "This is officially some weird wi-fi problem."

She drafted up a notice to that effect, sent it to the office mailing list, and assigned her teammate Sven to find and fix the problem. By 9:00 AM, all was well, and her team had sent out an update to that effect.

Now well into her daily routine, Makoto put the incident behind her. After all, it was resolved, wasn't it?

4:00 PM rolled around, and Makoto was somehow the recipient for an angry email from Greg in Sales. Is the internet still out? I need to close out my sales!!! Why hasn't your team fixed this yet! We could lose $300,000 if I can't close out my sales by 5PM!!!!!

Makoto rolled her eyes at the unnecessary number of exclamation points and checked the sales pipeline. Sure enough, there was nothing preventing her from accessing Greg's queue and verifying that all $100 worth of sales were present and accounted for.

Makoto cracked her knuckles and crafted the most polite response she could muster: As per my update at 9am, the Internet is back online and you should be able to perform any and all job duties at this time.

The reply came 2 minutes later: I cannot close my opportunities!!!

Makoto forwarded the email chain to Sven before rolling over to his desk. "Greg's being a drama llama again. Can you pull the firewall logs and prove he's got Internet?"

"'Course."

10 minutes and 4 raised eyebrows later, Sven replied to the ticket, copying Greg's boss and attaching a screenshot of the logs. As Makoto stated, we are online at this time. Is it possible your computer received a virus from browsing PornHub since 9:30 this morning?

Greg spent the next day in meetings with HR, and the next week on unpaid leave to think about what he'd done. To this day, he cannot look Sven or Makoto in the eye as they pass each other in the hallway. Makoto suspects he won't suffer long—only as long as it takes him to find another job. Maybe one with IT people who don't know what search keywords he uses.

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https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-logs-don-t-lie