The Boy Who Cried Wolf

I work on a piece of our system which is very complex. It consists of back end processing. So you just can't launch a GUI and start clicking around. There was a new guy assigned to test changes to this complex system. Obviously he has a lot of work to do. I had a few sessions with him to give him the overview of the system. Then I provided him access to a lot of documentation on the system. I also told him he would need to play with each of the main jobs to get a feel for how things worked.

Today I went out to get some lunch. When I got back, there were a flurry of emails from this tester. He said he used a test file to mock up some data for one of the processes. He ran the job to process the data, but nothing was happening. In the final email, he stated that this was a work stoppage.

A kind DBA took a look at the situation while I was gone. Turns out the process was waiting for the input file. I did a dive in, and found the data file was named wrong. I provided the correct name. I also specified the directory the file needed to be in, just in case. This got the tester past the problem.

Hey. I get that things will be tough if you are new. But don't sound the alarm that there is a work stoppage if you don't know what you are doing. That will only end up badly for you.

Next I find another email from the tester. He is trying to reconcile the results of the now successful job with another report. The problem is that the report has nothing to do with the process at hand. I send a quick reply back. In the reply, I stick to the facts. However I make it abundantly clear that the connections the tester is trying to make are not based in reality.