So it wasn't what you could really call a happy office.
I would be asked to do things like working up a hardware and software
package to satisfy a particular customer requirement. Fair enough.
Then I would be asked to do it again, so that it recommended Oracle as
the database. This was very evidently not the case, so I refused. They
were quite surprised.
This was the place where I worked out how to install Oracle (9i,
probably) on Debian (2.2). We were some sort of Super Double Preferred
Oracle Premium Partner Plus, which meant we got a support line who'd
say "we'll tell you how to run it on five-year-old RedHat, but
anything else is unsupported". Gosh. I'm sure that was worth it.
(Well, it did get us a kickback on Oracle sales; see above.) Anyway,
it turned out that there was a fairly short list of packages that one
had to install first, and one could uninstall many of them after the
installer had run; it would only work with a graphical interface,
though X-forwarding over ssh was good enough, while the database
itself didn't need any such nonsense.
The boss was prone to fits of temper for any reason or none. One
Friday afternoon his wife met him at the office, because they were
driving off somewhere for the weekend; on a hot day, she was wearing a
high-necked long-sleeved dress, and flinched every time he moved. That
was when I started seriously looking for other jobs.
There was some contract going out to tender, something to do with
Railtrack, and the boss had got the idea that we might have a chance
at it. A quick glance at the weird specificity of it made it
immediately apparent that the preferred bidder had already been
chosen, because nobody else would have (or choose to have) that
particular combination of skills across different operating systems
and obscure commercial software. The idea that a tender might not be
entirely 100% open and above board was news to these people.
When a lady from the Inland Revenue turned up (by appointment) to look
at the books, the boss's response was "shpx bss lbh oynpx ovgpu"
(see rot13.com but not safe for work). I was
faintly surprised that the company survived that; I am disappointed in
the Inland Revenue.
Anyway, I eventually jumped ship with no immediate prospect of
employment, and it was worth every penny I was unable to spend over
the next several months.
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