Energy drink company punished ERP graybeard for going too fast
Cool kids drank the aggressive micro-management Kool-Aid
On Call By Friday morning, techies may need a jolt of energy to get through the final day of the working week, so we deliver it in the form of a new instalment of On-Call, the weekly reader-contributed column that shares your tales of trying to deliver speedy tech support.
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Charles" who kindly said he's been reading The Register for 30 years and shared a story of a contract gig he undertook at an energy drink company he described as somewhat "monstrous" – so it's not the one where scarlet bovines flourish.
Charles arrived to find an ERP project running very late, and in need of a veteran's experience to get it back on track. He also found a workplace full of enormous retail fridges stacked to the gills with the company's sugary caffeine beverages, yet with the mostly young staff ignoring the free drinks on offer.
"Maybe they liked sleeping and not becoming diabetic," Charles mused to On Call.
But we digress. On his first day in the job, Charles showed up in chinos and casual shirt.
"The only thing that my manager said to me that day – while wearing company merch and grubby trainers – was that I had overdressed."
Happily, the company paired Charles with a chap of similar vintage and expertise who didn't mind how he dressed and offered some useful advice: Despite his employer appearing to be very casual, managers wanted to see drafts of any emails Charles planned to send to users of the ERP system.
Charles quickly wrestled the ERP into a state that meant it was ready for testing, so composed an email to the relevant users to let them know they would soon have a chance to put the package through its paces.
"Knowing it would be scrutinized by my manager, I adapted a similar email sent by the head of HR earlier that week," Charles told On Call. Satisfied that using a pre-approved email was a clever plan, he sent that draft to his manager.
Who didn't respond for two days.
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At that point, Charles tired of waiting, assumed it was okay to use his draft, and hit Send.
Not long afterwards, his manager sent a mail thanking him for moving the project along. But the next Monday, HR hauled him in for a "probation review" that ended with a swift sacking.
"It turned out the HR department decided I had encroached on her critical job of editing inter-departmental emails," Charles told On Call.
Charles didn't mind losing this gig.
"I have now found somewhere that's happy for me to send emails unsupervised," he told On Call.
Has email landed you in trouble at work? Here's one email that won't prove problematic: The one you're about to write by clicking here to contact On Call so we can share your story on a future Friday. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
