The Most Frustrating Experience You've Had

[eoore]

So, I was just curious, due to recent events, what is the most frustrating experience you've had with your technological career? For the worth of the whole "get it off your chest," I felt like this thread could be of some value to the people that are still salty about some unresolved incidents along their time.

I suppose, I'll share. Well, because, that's why I'm making this thread. ;D

I'm sitting here, in Nicaragua, for work. Our work is a very definite, defined, task-orientated line of profession. As such we're not really supposed to do anything but said work.
But ah ha ha. That sounds boring to all of you! Well, I will tell you that a) it kind of is b) Wednesday, (today!) we get free-time until 5. And, it's 4. I am desperately in search of something amusing, and to avoid the grandure that can be the ever-expansive "Google, what can I do when I'm bored?" search that is the internet, I started my own little project. An Ubuntu system that I'm kind of peicing together, I've been messing around with it for some months now. My coworkers had taken interest in said experiment, because of what it does, (super cool things, amirite?) and my boss catches wind of the project because of it. After 2 months of testing, programming, breaking things, fixing things, my boss tells me it's not sufficiently focused on the work, right? He tells me he'd prefer me to delete the system, and wait until I get home. Now, all I have left is forum cafes to roam around, and some randomly-selected Twitter threads.

There's one of my most frustrating experiences.

What's yours?

[mastablasta]

what part of this was frustrating? you were doing other things on the job. they politely told you to work on them at home instead.

[thenailedone]

My biggest frustration is when somebody calls me. I have tried making it clear that the best time to call me is e-mail.

[t0p]

Trying to dual-boot Ubuntu on my HP Windows 8.1-sporting laptop. Ended up using just winderrs for ages. Even now I'm using lubuntu 32-bit on VBox cos of the evil UEFI. HP is the source of endless frustration. If your life is happy, get a HP box and it will rock your equanimity.

[sevendogsbsd]

Running a hybrid bios/efi HP z800 workstation and couldn't be happier. It's essentially a bios machine that can do gpt partitions. Not in a rush to go uefi but when I do, will probably be a custom built.

[1fallen]

This experience I had with a very nice Gal that programed for a company (No Names here to protect the innocent. ;) ) I did a bit a work with a while back, and her printer had gone down, so she called down to the IT department and they sent her up a new printer still in the box, but it was a different brand and model so she was very confused on how to install it.
She gave it a good honest try, but failed to get it working.
I had gone to lunch with my old friend for about an hour and half, When I returned I went to her office to see how she was making out with the install. (Assuming the whole time she would have it up and running)
Well I could just see the frustration on her face, but asked how it was going.
She vented to me for a few minutes about the many attempts she had gone through to get it working without success, so I asked what steps she had made, and after listening to her describe the processes she had done, she finally said to me, "I even held it in front of the monitor to get it to see the printer". :confused:
You can imagine the many thoughts that was going through my head now and the look on my face.
And after a little time to compose myself, I got it installed and working for her.
She is now a highly paid programmer for another company.

[mg2003]

In college I used to run network drops as a job. We'd run 100 yards of Cat5 through crawl spaces, drop ceilings, etc. We'd crimp the ends, and inevitably the professor who "ordered it" would change their mind and want the drop one office further...or they'd rearrange their office and couldn't live with it on the wrong side of the room. Back into the crawl space we go!

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

This has happened to me more than once, when having 10-15 windows open on a single workspace, editing a script saving and testing it and nothing i do does anything some time later trying to figuring out saying WTF and doing CTRL+A, CTRL+X, CTRL+S and it still had no effect i was editing the backup copy, ](*,)
I tend to get really annoyed when nothing i do have any effect

Up late (1 or 2AM) getting my butt handed to me by a video game boss over and over, gave up went to bed and tried again in the morning and then i was able to crush him without taking a single hit with speed run level efficiency (without glitch abuse)

[thenailedone]

Up late (1 or 2AM) getting my butt handed to me by a video game boss over and over, gave up went to bed and tried again in the morning and then i was able to crush him without taking a single hit with speed run level efficiency (without glitch abuse)

Reminds me when I was still playing Magic the Gathering. I would get these insane deck ideas late at night that would be impossible to be beaten, replay all scenarios I could think of in my head to ensure it was the greatest deck of all times. Come the next morning and look at what I had built in shame and dispose of it before anyone else sees it (yeah, they were pretty bad).

[thistledooh]

My biggest frustration is when somebody calls me. I have tried making it clear that the best time to call me is e-mail.

I laughed, I really did, because the one thing that really gets my goat is when somebody thinks I am a superhero ready to fly into action at all times of the day and night.
It doesnt matter that I have had a long day and just want to eat dinner and drink wine and watch TV, theres always someone who thinks I am 24hr tech support guy
who just does this stuff for a laugh.
So I was in charge of setting up all the computers for a company, setting up the servers and cabling etc etc. Then the directors
of that company sign the support agreement and everyones happy, everything is great then about a week later I get a phone call from one of them.
Hello, yes I am just at home and my daughters computer in her room is blah blah blah" so i helped them out it took 5 minutes
Cut a long story short this guy a year later is phoning me at 1am 9pm,, you name it, at least twice a week he is phoning me hassling me to fix his home computers
Or help him when he is in his office at 10pm doing his accounts. I had to pretend I lost my phone at one point. I was glad when he got moved out of the company
I never made the mistake of giving out private phone numbers to companies after that I can tell you

[lisati]

It annoys me that people want my mobile number and use it as a first point of contact when they know I spend a significant part of my time within reach of my landline. Private numbers are another annoyance. (There are options, including call blocking apps.)