27 February, 2009

The Slug Trail of Culpability

He had to wait until it was (possibly) my last month here, but he's finally done it: Ted E. has been in tampering with the database again, deleting records, creating and selling phantom software inventory the organisation has no entitlement to deploy ... and this time he's left his fingerprints all over everything, and not mentioned anything of what he was doing to anyone else in the team.

The beauty of it is, I wasn't even looking for any of this: I just stumbled across a couple of things that unfolded into a chain of deletions, arbitrary data editing, and no consultation with the people who were actually responsible for the stuff he was messing with.

I don't have any great hope that he'll get even a token rap over the knuckles for this, but (finally) he's left a trail that's too clear and obvious to be dismissed as simple error or miscommunication, and that he can't just bluster his way out of without digging himself deeper.  So even if I finish here in four weeks (and, oh, do I want to!), I can leave knowing I've put a serious and lasting dent in his pretensions to being an efficient and effective team player.

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