Tales from Tech Support: Client drives software developer over the edge

[steve2470]

Last edited Mon Nov 13, 2017, 11:37 PM - Edit history (1)

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/6yggpa/the_one_where_our_coworker_snaps/

(this is an account by a reddit poster, not me)

I'm ba-ack! Yes, I left a cryptic message in my last post about our coworker going insane. I admit, I may have been just a bit hyperbolic to cause anticipation, but I reserve my right to literary license for funsies. Anyway, on to the tale:

This was many years ago, around the same time as my previous posts, and involved the consulting company I (and Mark and Pink) worked for at the time (let's call it $ConsCo), a couple of good developers who also worked at $ConsCo ($D1 and $D2 for simplicity), and a client of ours (let's say $WorldCo).

I can't say much at all about $WorldCo without flat out identifying them. Suffice to say that they tried to do good things for people all over the world, which meant they had consultants-slash-employees all around the world, often in rural areas in developing countries. They came to us with a problem for which they needed a solution. We had worked with employees of $WorldCo before, so we got recommended and got the job.

This particular problem involved $WorldCo's consultants and the fact that they were frequently off the grid. They needed a system that would be able to securely sync forms and files from their laptops to a central server when they did come back online. This was long ago when likely those laptops had Windows 98, or maybe Windows 2000 on them. Much before the availability of any real off-the-shelf solutions. We actually recommended they use Lotus Notes, since it could do pretty much what they wanted with just a bit of development work. They had some issue with Notes, though, and didn't want to use it, so it was up to us to engineer something else.
have a couple more stories waiting in the wings.)

eta: there is a copyright on this sub-reddit, so only 4 paragraphs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/ more potentially interesting stories there

[Sunlei]

1. I like this comment OP got.

"Look, I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"