Its amazing how many people are sent out on jobs without proper training, escalation points, or the necessary resources to get the job done.
We use the DC Blox datacenter here in birmingham to house our data center and my boss had to go by for something and forgot his badge, the girl was lost as to what to do. How are you in charge of MILLIONS of DOLLARS of data and not have an a.b.c. playbook for the staff??? She had to call 2 different people to find out all she needed was his Drivers License a signature and give him a temporary badge.
I had a similar situation at my old hotel job.
I was setting up for comedy show in one of the ballrooms. The event director realized they didn't put a spotlight in the lighting plan. They told me to put one in the middle of the third row.
Problem is the spotlight was on a tripod. I told them flat out that if I put a black tripod in the middle of an aisle of a dark room people are going to trip over the legs. So instead they told me to fold up the tripod and duct tape it to a wooden beam in the middle of the room.
Problem there was that the beam was directly behind two rows of seats and the spotlight weighed 20 lb. If that tape gave way it could be fatal. Like dropping a hot bowling ball on somebody's head.
They insisted, so like a fool I did it anyway.
Tape gave out in the middle of the setup. I finally got it to hold, barely, on the second try.
Unfortunately I lost my temper a bit and yelled out "oh fuck". None of the guests were around, but the event planner overheard me and reported it to the GM.
A few days later I was written up for foul language. They wanted me to sign the form so I asked them "are you going to write up the event planner for nearly killing your guests?"
He replied, and I kid you not, "don't worry about it. We have great lawyers."
I immediately gave my two weeks notice.
The craziest part was that this hotel is a well known meeting place for some of the richest venture capitalists in California. People walk in there and leave with millions of dollars worth of funding on a nightly basis. People pay upwards of $1,000 a night just to get access to the room I was setting up in.
It infuriates me that the grunts at the bottom of the food chain are expected to be cool under pressure, turn out flawless work, and take all the blame for everybody else's mistake. Meanwhile the supervisors have almost no accountability whatsoever.
