Too much
This database administrator — “he describes himself as ‘not just a DBA,’” reports a pilot fish in the know — wants to remove an error code on an Oracle system because he’s sure the system is wrong and he’s right. “He described the problem to his assistant DBA, who didn’t argue with him,” says fish. “Then he asked his supervisor for permission to remove the error code. He told his boss that the system was erroring when a number was divided by zero — ‘and everyone knows that five divided by zero is one.’”
Too subtle
IT guy sends an e-mail to the whole company. The subject of the e-mail is “Phishing examples”. “The IT professional described two well-known and classic examples of convincing phishing attacks,” says a pilot fish who was one of the people who received the message. “He attached the two original e-mails, and also included the directive, ‘Notice where the links take you.’ Less than an hour later came the follow-up e-mail: ‘DON’T CLICK THE LINKS.’ I guess his original description of the evil e-mails was a little too subtle for some users.”
Too hasty
An end user calls up a help desk pilot fish about a problem that has cropped up with his BlackBerry device. “I told him I was going to need the make, model and serial number,” says fish. User: I don’t know where I can find that. Fish: Just pull out the battery and it should be right underneath there. The line goes dead, and fish realizes what’s wrong. “He was talking on the BlackBerry,” groans fish. “He called back and said, ‘I think I disconnected myself with that BlackBerry issue.’ I guess this is why we all have jobs.”
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