Beware the Ides of March

I should have listened to my own advice.

Things were slow at The Office. Quite slow. So slow that P (one of the other tech support guys) decided to leave early. Smirk was out sick (the flu) and the other remaining tech support guy, C, has had his hours cut back and wasn't in The Office today.

Leaving me.

Of course, once P left, the phone started ringing off the hook.

Okay, it wasn't that bad …

But I was kept busy today. When I wasn't requeing emails [1] I was answering customers questions about why they weren't getting emails [2], downloading a new customer's site to our server (and finding out it wasn't so critical to be done today—sigh), talking to a customer that talked wouldn't stop talking—I knew what he wanted about thirty seconds into the conversation, but he just … wouldn't … stop … talking … and I couldn't even get a word in edgewise … just … okay … ye— … ok— … let— … me— … ye— … I'll— … I'll— … yes— … yes— … ok— … I'll— … ye— … I'llgiveSmirkthemessagegoodbye!click.

Sheesh.

And then …

Another customer (who's actually next door to The Company) wants some modifications done to his osCommerce [3] site—the same one I was working on last week [4]. There are “too many clicks.” Wants me to remove a few of the check-out steps as the site only has two products.

There are over five hundred files in the typical osCommerce installation. Five hundred files written in PHP. And he wants me to remove a few steps.

Heh.

Heh heh.

Oh, my side!

“Yes, just give me an estimate. If it'll take a few minutes, just say that. If it'll take three hours, good enough.”

“Um … how about days?”

I think the desk is going to win [5].

[1] /boston/2005/03/14.1

[2] /boston/2005/03/13.2

[3] http://www.oscommerce.org/

[4] /boston/2005/03/10.1

[5] /boston/2005/01/12.1

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