That's pretty sorry, all right

This IT pilot fish at a small manufacturing company really could use his upcoming vacation -- particularly to get away from one co-worker.

"This guy has already gotten on my last nerve with his blatantly unprofessional conduct, horrid attendance and inability to get anything done," grumbles fish.

"So I took a much needed long-distance trip, armed with a portable Wi-Fi device, a laptop and a cell phone," fish says. "Things seemed to go pretty well except for a few hiccups, and I came home and slept off the rest of the week, preparing to return to work that following Monday."

Part of fish's job -- a part that he still has to do even on vacation, because the IT team is so small -- is to start a program that sends invoices and advance shipping notices by email or FTP. So on Friday evening, he signs onto the system.

The first thing he sees: Invoice requests are stacking up, with no sign of them being processed. And fish knows the requests have to finish before he starts his process.

Maybe it's just a glitch, he figures. He restarts the invoice program and lets it finish so that he can start his own process on time. Since so one is working over the weekend, fish figures that tracking down the source of the problem can wait until Monday.

Fast forward to Monday: Fish hasn't even settled into back-to-work mode when he runs into the problem co-worker, who casually tells him, "Oh, I restarted the database server."

What?!? "He then told me he got permission from the customer-service team leader to do it," groans fish. "Never mind that applications have to be restarted as well or they drop the connections and fail to start. Did he check those? No. Did he ask our boss or me? No! He just did it on his own.

"My complaint is met with an insincere 'Sorry,' in the same tone of voice he uses when confronted about his work habits.

"He's still with the company, but I hear his days are numbered."

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