Pwned by the consultant

Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under Technology, Work

So last week we had a new VOIP phone system installed. This required replacing our DSL connection with a T-1 line to support both voice and data. The install was pretty seemless, although now I have to learn Adtran OS to edit my firewall rules. They advised we use that instead of our Juniper to keep latency down.

Everything was all hunky dorey so Wednesday we shutdown the entire office and take a group lunch to discuss all the recent changes to the network. We also recently outsourced Exchange services and our CRM database. The boss caters food to his home and we all dig on. My phone rings twice but I just ignore it.

We get back to the office two hours later to a downed network and several frantic voicemmail messages from the technician that installed our phone system. It turns out he’s responsible for our network being down.  He decided on his own to futz around with our firewall settings without notifying us first. Apparently the Einstein had five browser windows open to several different clients and he wiped out our entire configuration thinking he was editing someeone else’s FW. Ths locked HIM out so he couldn’t undo the damage before we got back. He’d been trying to call me while we were at lunch. He’s actually lucky I didn’t answer because the boss would have had a few choice words for him. There are only 2-3 times a year we close the office for lunch so he picked the worst of all possible days to do this.

He walks me through recreating the right configuration in about 45 minutes or so. Of course this was after he asks me to connect to a desktop sharing website so he can take over my computer and do it himself which I obviously can’t do since we have no fucking internet access. The boss was NOT happy….AT ALL. Needless to say he has been made persona non grata at our site. A fun time was not had by all.

Permalink | October 1st, 2007

One Response to “Pwned by the consultant”

  1. Anna Louise Says:
    October 3rd, 2007 at 8:55 am

    Makes you wonder who the idiots are sometimes