To See You Nice

My Dear Fellow,

I got snippy with Man Who Can't Finish A Sentence today. He totally deserved it.

I think it suprises people when I do things like that. This is because people think I am happy and jovial all the time. They do not realise it is a total lie and I am in fact EMBITTERED and HATEFUL inside.

It's 27 years in IT that has done this to my soul. Internally, I'm like Linda Blair in The Exorcist but with worse language.

I also have the philosophy that in order to get by at work I basically need only two personalities; Bruce Forsyth and Jeremy Paxman. Most of the time I am Brucie - charming my contestants but secretly mocking them behind their backs. However, today I was Jezza - "I MUST press you for an answer. But you STILL haven't answered the question."

Part of the problem is that Man Who Can't Finish A Sentence has a habit of not answering the question you asked him, but instead talking about what HE thinks is important instead. It's not a misunderstanding, he just doesn't listen.

Today I asked him what should happen if we send a marketing email to someone and they unsubscribe to our marketing (i.e. tell us to eff off). He went off on a big talk about what happens if we email to an invalid email address.

THIS IS NOT THE SAME THING.

AT ALL.

I MUST PRESS YOU FOR AN ANSWER!

Then he accused me of "solutionising". Red rag, my dear fellow, red rag.

You and Princess Normal probably don't get this. Developers are paid to design solutions. But not analysts. We get it all the time from lazy business people. Our job is merely to understand the requirements so you can do your job, you see. Go beyond that boundary and you are "solutionising" - imposing your view on the poor developer.

Sometimes, when you're asking the difficult questions of business people and THEY DON'T KNOW THEIR OWN EFFING MIND they stall by accusing you of "solutionising". So today I asked whether data should be available to the business people for reporting purposes or whether we should hide this data from them.

"Oh, that's just solutionising..." started Man Who Can't Finish A Sentence.

My dander. It was UP.

"No," I replied, "that is what is called a Detailed Requirement. And Developer needs to know whether YOU want to see this data so he can do his job."

At which point Man Who Can't Finish A Sentence said, and I quote, "We seem to have a difference of opinion here, Developer - what's your understanding?"

Poor Developer.

He answered diplomatically. "Errr.. well... I need to know what data to store, sure... and also I need to know what data you want to report on."

Man Who Couldn't Finish A Sentence was a bit huffy after that. I didn't gloat though. I was all Brucie again.

Parsones

p.s. Apparently the statue of the solider on a horse is some relation of Elaine's. A great great uncle or something.