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| Zenith National Bank's monthly "club deposit" by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 12/08/2013, 2:42am PST | ||||
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| Mail Clerk: Hey, the mail room manager says this package is to be delivered to the Information Technology department.
Supervisor Joe: Oh, that one. Yeah, right size envelope, comes on the right day, with our Business Reply Mail number on it, okay. Look, that goes to the new secretary for the IT department. We'll see if she's up to it. Programmer: Is that really fair? Joe: Look, I have put up with enough shit for this bank after 40 years, I figure she can handle this. Literally. I use it as a test, if they can handle this, they can handle anything, even the occasional upset customer who's mad at the loan department for screwing up their... Secretary: (Scream, runs off) Joe: ... account. Okay, last time we did maintenance on one of the core systems, who broke the build? Programmer: Charlie. Joe: Go get him. Charlie: Yeah, Joe? Joe: When we rebuilt the application suite for handling the bank's primary systems, your change broke the build. That delayed us 15 minutes. You know the rules. You break the build, you get to baby sit it. And you're on club duty. The deposit is, I presume on the Secretary's desk, go get a pair of latex gloves from the janitor's mop closet and take the deposit to the, ahem, depository. Charlie: Uh, sir, with all due respect, can't we get one of the new developers to do that? Joe: (smiles) You only call me 'sir' when you want to curry favor, like when you come by asking for a raise. The reason is that you're supposed to test your changes on the test partition, not commit them. You break the build, you get the job of rebuilding it until someone else does. And you're on club duty every month. It's a punishment so you learn something. If we can get a secretary who's up to club duty, I'll give that to them. Our latest secretary just quit when she got it. That means you get this too. Be glad we only get a shipment from the club once a month. Charlie: (grumbles) All right. (he leaves) Programmer: Do you have to be that harsh? Joe: Do you know where I was the week of July 4, 1986? Programmer: No. Joe: Right where you are, writing Cobol batch applications and CICS transactions for our mainframe. That's when I first learned about the Y2K problem. Over the years as we did maintenance we fixed anything date related. By 1995 we had every package and every application known to be bullet proof. (Smiles) I remember when the then head of IT came in around in 1998, was worried. I told him we'd fixed all of them three years earlier. It's why he recommended me for head of the IT department when he retired. I've spent 40 years working on the care and feeding of this bank's core applications. To put it bluntly, if they ever didn't work right, Zenith National Bank would be in receivership faster than you can say 'FDIC.' You couldn't hire enough people fast enough to handle everything we do manually. I can't stress that strongly enough. The checking account package is older than I am, some of the code that we are still using was written back in 1965 when we started automation. Programmer: Wow. Joe: I made 5 grand off Y2K. Programmer: How did you do that? Joe: Hold on a sec. (dials number) Marcia, this is Joseph Colman in IT, our secretary quit, can you see about hiring a new one. Yeah, again. How should I know why? Maybe they don't like working for a bank or don't like working for an IT department that uses mainframes. Thanks. (hangs up) Programmer: So, you were saying? Joe: So an executive comes to see me, get this, in November, 1999, and asks how we're doing on the Y2K conversion. I told him hold on, I went down to the merchant's cage and signed for it, I walk back in, open my case and drop a thousand bucks in a brick of hundreds. I said, "Let's make this interesting. A month's salary. A thousand from me out of my own pocket against 5 grand from you that they can't even find a 6-digit-date anywhere in code we're running, let alone have any errors that occur." I won that bet too, Y2K was a non-event, nothing happened. Programmer: Shouldn't you tell Marcia why we have to keep hiring a new secretary? Joe: Not my problem, they pay people in Personnel to find people, let them earn their overhead. It's not my fault that someone got so pissed off at this bank and decided to take a dump in a bag and mail it to us every month, just like a mortgage payment. And to add injury to insult, they mail it with our Business Reply Mail permit so we have to pay the postage on it. So until they get tired of doing it, that's why we belong to the club. Programmer: Yeah, the club. Joe: And if we get a secretary that doesn't freak out every month we can tell her that, congratulations, you managed to stand becoming the recipient of the regularly scheduled deposit of the 'Turd of the Month Club'. |
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Zenith National Bank's monthly "club deposit" by 12/08/2013, 2:42am PST  correction: "two thousand dollars in a brick of twenties" NT by 12/08/2013, 3:17am PST Working on a new "novel"? NT by 12/08/2013, 9:37am PST Looking forward to the self-quotes already by 12/08/2013, 10:28pm PST Re: Looking forward to the self-quotes already by 12/09/2013, 4:27pm PST I always heard Europe was a Kafkaesque nightmare, but these laws are ridiculous! NT by 12/09/2013, 4:50pm PST Hahaha, I knew the certified insane part would make you flip out by 12/10/2013, 9:39am PST Paul, your insanity is showing again. NT by 12/10/2013, 10:40pm PST Re: Zenith National Bank's monthly "club deposit" by 12/08/2013, 9:44am PST I rest my case. NT by 12/08/2013, 10:20pm PST |
