Annoyed

[bjarvis]

I went to Advanced & Challenge club night tonight, with justetthon calling. She had previously (and very graciously) offered me some mic time if I wished, and I had prepared some choreography to take full advantage.

After dancing two A2 tips and one C1, my pager went off. Bloody hell.

Of course it couldn't be some simple issue I could talk folks through. No, it was a production application emergency which needed root access to resolve. Damn, damn, damn.

I quickly said my good-byes, hopped in my car and headed for home. Half-way there, I got a subsequent page which indicated they were mistaken, the application issue could be resolved by fixing their own configuration file and all was well.

Grrr.

Comments

[moofedct.livejournal.com]

"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are easy to annoy and have the root password."

bloody hell is right!

[justetthon.livejournal.com]

shoulda come back. I know, you live a piece out of town... to just turn around and come back, but we were cooking right up to the bitter end!! Maybe next time, hon. We'll leave that bloody pager in a dark, dank corner somewhere so you can have two hours of peaceful dancing!

[beartalon.livejournal.com]

When I was in a choir an hour from home, this happened often, and never near the end of practice or before I left for choir so I could duck early or not go at all. I'd be far enough away that it wasn't worth it to go back before I got the cancelling call.

Often these calls could have been averted without me. Later they were always averted when I forced a policy change: "Don't call me before you work through the troubleshooting documentation. That's how triage is supposed to be done on every call. I'm not to be called if you haven't done your own work. If you can't explain why you can't follow directions, I'm not coming home just because I 'can do it faster'."

My manager once told me that on pager nights I had to be within 45 minutes of my laptop. Choir was 15 minutes further.

"Then give me a wireless laptop like the one you have or make someone take the pager like I have to do when my coworkers or their children have their sports leagues."

Never happened. Even after I moved on from that position, people would call me at home at night...