I make no apologies for being a contractor - after all Bob Widlar insisted on that title rather than a 'consultant'
This is a collection of reminiscences from my time in software contracting. Some names have been changed to camouflage the guilty, but there again some of them have not!
My third ever contract was with a firm in Surrey in the mid-eighties where we designed the London Underground ticketing system. I got involved because an old permie friend of mine rang me up and enticed me on board with phrases such as 'good rates',' all the overtime you can handle',' prestigious job' etc etc.
So another old friend from Cambridge and I agreed to sign on the dotted line, and we hired a house between the three of us in Brockham.The team had a great proliferation of Allans. I'm an Allan, my mate Alan was an Alan, - there were loads of them. So any time you wanted one, you could shut the whole team down for five minutes by going into our Lab and yelling Alan. It was so confusing that us intelligent (!) engineers decided that a little name-oriented bit-stuffing was required, and so everyone, whether they were called Alan or not, was called Harry. I was Harry Hurst, my mate Geoff became Harry Norman and so on. Problem solved. We're all Harrys to this very day.
Tale 1 : In which Geoff gets converted, stuffed, fired, and unfired in the space of 2 working days and an Anglo-American understanding develops.
The rules of our little menage a trois in Brockham were that we all took a turn in housework and cooking. My tastes and Harry Chaney's ran to hot curries, whereas Geoff would seldom venture beyond a British style sausage-and-chips.
This didn't last long, and the heat of our curries during the year we were there went from Madras to well beyond the Phall event horizon. Harry C was married to a delightful lady who was a keen and excellent cook, so his problem was that of general incompetence in the cooking line rather than limitation in cuisine - and, of course, this meant he didn't have much idea about shopping for food.
One day he came back from the shops with ten pounds of sprouts. 'I like sprouts' he said. Sure, we said, but TEN POUNDS?? Being of a subversive turn of mind, it being my turn to cook, I converted a fair proportion of them into that wonderful invention, a surefire winner on any curry eater's plate - the SPROUT BHAJI.
This dish, however, had some unfortunate side effects - read on!
Geoff's guts had always been rather on the inventive side in their own way, and could clear a crowded room in twelve seconds flat with their anal outpourings. Once introduced to our super-califragilistic pulse and curry Brockham fare they found themselves in a sort of intestinal heaven, and converted at least 10 per cent of anything which came their way into aural and olfactory energy - much to the dissatisfaction of anyone working near his corner of the lab. I reckoned that with suitable modifications to the carburettor on his car and a little bit of tubing he could have made it back and forth every week from Cambridge with no expenditure on petrol whatever.
On Thursday nights we'd brew up a truly ginormous lentil and chilli loaded weapon system, prime his working parts with a few of pints of yeast-packed Burton Ale to get them in the mood, then leave him Friday at work for his internal organs to fester them into 4-star. By the middle of Friday afternoon if he held tight he'd be loaded up and ready to go. With the journey otherwise costing about 4 galls of petrol at 2-ish quid a gall (Those were the days!), we'd be on a winner. Geoff reckoned the extra corrosion in the engine might be significant, but it was a bit of a beat-up heap anyway, so we'd little to lose.
Unfortunately this plan for maximising our profits by saving on fuel came to a sudden and disturbing halt in the following way. As I mentioned previously, although we could see pennies to be gleaned from Geoff's super-efficient methane plant, the product was rather offensive to unaccustomed noses, and his bit of the lab became known as 'pollution corner'.
Strong men would walk an extra 30 yards outside the buildings to the tea room several times a day rather than run the gauntlet of his guts. The nearby wallpaper was much more decrepit and his computer crashed more often. Some unkind folk put this down to Compaq, but I'm sure their line acceptance tests didn't foresee the environment Geoff subjected his machine to.
And it didn't just stop at pollution corner - the noisome product of his fecund rear insinuated itself into every nook and cranny of the lab, and condensed in unexpected places ready to leap out on unsuspecting passers-by.
A particularly comfortable nest for the stuff was the great bible in the corner wherein dwelt the Task Interface Message Specification - the dreaded TIS. Many a time the American management team would observe some poor Brit contractor slumped over this tome coughing and swearing, and would grill him at the next progress meeting, presuming him to have discovered some hitherto unnoticed field in a message which needed to be implemented.
But this was seldom true. Geoff's anal effulgence had a strongly anarchistic bent, and could spontaneously change any message into any other presumably by meant of selectively rotting the cellulose in the paper. I swear it got inside the big Intel development system as well and corrupted several files - why else wouldn't the f**** thing build a process when you asked it to?
As Sherlock Holmes wisely intoned, when you have eliminated all the probable explanations, what remains, however unlikely it may seem, must be the truth. But the American managers hadn't come across Conan Doyle's sapient hero, and put our lack of progress down to other things - with results I now relate.
As Christmas approached a few of us thought that Geoff's anal extravaganzas deserved a little recognition, so, one evening when he'd cleared off early to do some cooking, we built a sort of sarcophagus over his desk from office partitions. Garnished with a few bits of mistletoe (have you ever seen mistletoe wilt before your eyes?), balloons, and a large 'Happy Christmas, Geoff's Arse' note, we sped back to Brockham and awaited next morning's chuckle. But that's not how it worked out.
Next morning all was cleared up by the time we got in, and we all got on with our work. At lunchtime I sauntered down to the shops to get some veg, and Geoff came along with me. He seemed rather quiet, and when prompted said 'I've been fired'.
It seemed that early that morning the boss of the huge American corporation of which the English company we were working for was a tiny part had dropped in on his way to take his wife to Harrods or some similar important engagement. Seeing Geoff's adorned desk, he asked 'who sits there?'. On being told, he said 'Well fire the f**** Limey'.
This seemed a bit unfair to us. After all, Geoff hadn't even been on the premises when the dirty deed was done, never mind done anything himself. So the perpetrators - two of the three team leaders and the head of integration, who had actually done the job, went in to see the American boss. We said that if he fired Geoff he'd have to fire us too.
The boss was nonplussed.
It was obvious he just didn't believe that English contractors would quit a well-paid long-term contract on a matter of principle, and started on about how this wasn't the only thing, Geoff's work was below par, he was being a disruptive influence and suchlike crap. It was then made very clear that this was plain straightforward English blackmail, and he could take it or leave it. Geoff stayed, and after that the Yank bosses were just that tiny bit less arrogant towards us.
Further tales may be forthcoming.
Allan
