Over time, sometimes I get a few little pet peeves built up and I tend to use my blog here as a way to release those peeves. So today is deemed “rant day” and I’m going to shoot out a few small items that bother me.

community peeves
I understand that we’re a worldwide community and as such, English is not everyones first language. That’s cool with me. But I dislike seeing English-speakers just massacre the language. Constant grammatical errors and broken sentences make Jesus want to punch babies.

Reading comprehension. This is a big one. You can almost tell when someone has read the first three lines of a mailing list email and spits out a reply to just those three lines; completely missing the rest of the message. Sometimes they give really good answers…to the wrong questions.

People who argue that there is only one right way to do something (their way). While protocols have not hugely changed and some things are very much the way they were 10 years ago, environments and business uses are vastly different. What works in one environment will maybe not work or be acceptable in another.

Saying there is no silver bullet to security, then pointing out how everything is broken just because it has one problem or two. This creates a nice little unachievable paradox. I see this used a lot by analysts who refuse to be wrong. I think the only acceptable solution to them is if Jesus sends down a sword-bearing angel to protect the data.

workplace peeves
Making work requests without providing the reason, authority, or problem that is being fixed. “I need access to John’s files.” Please explain the request in context so that we’re not just making willy-nilly changes that may or may not fix the problem and may or may not be authorized. I think I see this in the workplace more often than any other pet peeve of mine.

Reading comprehension. My last job was not so bad at this, but my current company is just downright terrible when it comes to email coherency and reading comprehension. I purposely send out emails that are 2-3 sentences long to get right to the point, and people still don’t read. Just yesterday I got a request to stand up a new email account. I replied back asking who needs access. The response I got back was, “It doesn’t work yet.” Jesus is starting to kill kittens now.

I love when users engage multiple people on a problem without telling anyone, i.e. abusing support processes or authority. Sometimes some people ask each IT employee their question until someone gives them the answer they want. Sometimes people escalate everything they don’t get their way on, complaining to everyone until it is done. Others with authority sometimes engage 3 people to get their important task done, without realizing those three people may be stepping on each other’s toes and wasting 2 of those people’s time and possibly breaking other things in the process. If 3 people are going to work on a problem, I’d rather work together and share ideas than each of us secretly working separately.