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W∴ Balboos wrote: Unless one has some very special drugs, I don't think it's normal to get along with everyone - but what do I know.
I don't have to get along with every passenger on the train. For work, I'm not paid to get along, but to do my job.
Getting along is overrated.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I'm pretty laid back.
I try very hard to just ignore those I can't stand, but it doesn't always work.
In one company there was me (Technical manager - in charge of everything more complicated than a mains plug) and Martin (General manager - in charge of sales, office, paperwork) both reporting to the managing director. And I detested the slimy little weasel; the feeling was mutual.
So I just worked round him. He came up with change requests, which went on post-it notes with all the others and were stuck to my wall. What he never realised was that the wall was a priority order, and his were added at the bottom. Which coincidentally was just above my bin.
I outlasted him though - he got the sack after I found out by accident that he was spending several hours a day on porn sites during office hours. Then a whole load of nasties cam creeping out the woodwork, like his affair with one of the office girls, falsified invoices, ... He went from General Manager at a 2-digit-million pound turnover company to a night shelf stacker at the local supermarket (his wife insisted he wasn't in the house at night after the affair and the girlfriend dumped him due to the porn).
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Good stuff, we want more! I think it has a Dickensian touch to it 
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That sort of hints at another informal poll: the sweet taste of spitting on your advisary's grave, or perhaps, instead of spitting, you give it the horny male cat treatment.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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He was responsible for the single worst working day of my entire life.
Because of the porn sites, I was told to go through his entire machine and check what kind of porn it was: the MD specifically wanted to know if there was any child porn on there with a view to handing it all over to the police if there was.
So in an "open" office, I spent the entire day looking at someone else's idea of what to watch - and there was a lot of it - checking each picture (this was the dial up era, so no videos) and half expecting the next image I opened to be something I really, really never want to look at. Fortunately, I didn't find any.
Horrible, horrible day. I downed 2 inches of good single malt when I got home in a single glug.
Gave me a new appreciation for what police forensic departments have to go through... 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I have a friend and former colleague who used to be a deputy for the local Sheriff's Department. He told me a story of them capturing a child pornography distributor and he had to spend several days going through all of the videos to tag them as evidence. He had to get psychological help after that. The Sheriff also had to confiscate his sidearm to prevent an unfortunate accident with the defendant.
When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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Had there been an incident with the defendant, I doubt it would have been either unfortunate or accidental. I'm sure you know that though. 
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On one occasion I got a hand-me-down laptop from the president of the company as he was getting a newer shinier one. At the time, I didn't need a laptop - I worked entirely on my custom desktop development monster machine and laptops were just too wimpy back then. I eventually used it for product demos at trade shows. Before that I decided to clean-up the disk as it didn't seem to have much space left. Needless to say, when I looked in the recycle bin I was shocked by the porn I found there - male gay and S&M stuff mostly, some bestiality. I deleted a lot of it and then thought I should un-delete it and save it as evidence. I ran a utility that ended up un-deleting a whole lot more, including some really nasty stuff!   At this point I panicked, wiped and reformatted the drive, installed Windows 98 to replace the old Windows 95 (that was the excuse I gave him for doing it) and lost the final dregs of any respect (not much) for him I had.
I depended on his employment for my Green Card and decided, since I had thoroughly destroyed all the evidence, to not report him to the police at that time. 
A couple of years later he fled the country with both the IRS (tax evasion) and the FBI (the rumour was that it was for child pornograhy - no proof but I believed it) in hot pursuit. We all lost our jobs as a result. Luckily, I had recently married a USian and didn't need him for an employment-based green card any more.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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That was how they caught Garry Glitter[^] - he took his computer to PC World for repair and they saw what was on his hard disk
"Hello, Mr Policeman? We have something here you should see..."
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Imagine how boring life would be if everyone could get along with everyone, it's just like in the movies, there always must be an antagonist or you would fall asleep while watching 
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Predictor of vulnerable employees, is he a psycholotic?
I personally have only one rule: If you are competent and do your job and don't play office politics too much, we will get along nicely, otherwise it's war.
modified 20-Oct-19 21:02pm.
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Urban Cricket wrote: Predictor
![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) ing spell checker.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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None of your business, butthead.
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yes sure some people are like that all of the time, but sometimes everybody does that.
Classic example is road rage:
- yes there are the perpetual assholes ... always trying to save those precious seconds, always have to be first ... to the next red light.
- but sometimes even the most laid back will have their road rage moments, not every time, not every day, but once in a while there will be that moment when they want to stop grandpa getting in front, or annoyed at some small near-ish [not really, missed by a mile] incident...
Have you never once been annoyed at someone else on the road going just a wee bit too slow or too close (but nothing actually happened), heck you can get that walking on the footpath or in the supermarket, and looking back what did it really cost you apart from the raised blood pressure?
Good days, bad days, days you're just not into it, days when everything went smooth, days you would like to have over, days you will cherish for years.
We all have them.
Message Signature
(Click to edit ->)
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W∴ Balboos wrote: And, of course, the chronic liars
W∴ Balboos wrote: This could probably be contorted into a survey question, but meanwhile, any comments (or more interestingly, examples!) ? Even those of you who claim you're described in the preceding paragraph
I don't think that the results of your survey would be particularly meaningful. By their very nature, the contributions from the chronic liars would not be valid; but you would not know which ones thet were as they'd lie about being liars.
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Misunderstandings:
1) Liars are on the list of expendables, not deliberate survey targets.
2) What in the world would make you think the results of (any) survey are ever valid?
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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In my 38 year career as a programmer, I've had people I liked (and didn't), people I respected (and didn't). I've always managed to be sufficiently professional to deal with all of them, even though at times it was like gargling with broken glass.
Of course, there's always that one exception.
"BK" decided that I was a moron, since I worked on a different product line from him. Every time I dealt with him he would lie, misdirect, or ignore the question. When I finally recognized what was going on, I stopped talking to him: in person, in meetings, via e-mail, anything. I simply acted as if he didn't exist. He eventually 'retired' early, when they tried to reassign him to another product and he did absolutely nothing fox six months.
This is the first and only person in my career whom I have actively hated. Even the people who were frustrating, less than bright, or just lazy could be dealt with. Not only would I throw this guy under the bus, I'd be driving it.
The final piss-in-your-oatmeal of this story is, due to a succession of "workforce adjustments", I am now the maintainer of BK's product. See my post A couple of entries from the Codex Vomitus[^] in the Weird and the Wonderful for details.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Except there's been more than one, I, too, use the ignore-their-existence method to whatever extent possible. One is a current fellow employee (used to be a friend) that betrayed trust - to perhaps earn a brownie point or two. The other, in the current environment, is a contractor and his cronies - who are singularly uncooperative (and crappy programmers, as well). In their case, actually, I'll occasionally say things to remind them that the in-house developers do it right, know what their up to . . . and will have no trouble tearing up their meal ticket. On the other hand, they do make us look good!
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I did have one case of a sub-contractor who was spying on us, as they were a competitor on other USAF contracts. The guy became quite arrogant and indignant one Monday morning when he discovered his system administrator privileges had been revoked, and there were access control lists on everything. I didn't dislike the guy, he was pretty sharp. I just didn't approve of his lack of ethics.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Ethics.
Something I mentioned here, to some company bigshots:
they should be very thankful and especially nice to the developers whom they know to have ethics.
The havoc we could cause, including taking into account backups, is enormous. We're not like a cashier or teller: we hold the logical keys to their kingdom.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Gary Wheeler wrote: Not only would I throw this guy under the bus, I'd be driving it.
How would you throw him under the bus that you are driving? 
Cheers,
विक्रम
"We have already been through this, I am not going to repeat myself." - fat_boy, in a global warming thread 
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Carefully, how else? 
Software Zen: delete this;
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Lower him/her gently by a rope around their neck?
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I live in a resort town where the are tons of transient drunks individuals and few of us permanent residence who stay home at night. As I get older, perhaps it is because of my surroundings, perhaps not, but my tolerence of others is ever shrinking. Which I try to keep in check because they all have a right to be here and are probably nice people.
I like to come here and enjoy the intelligent banter. Feels like the old home place.
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