It's a very special kind of urgent

This engineering firm tests equipment as part of its business, so when a manager at a site in another country sends programmer pilot fish a message saying he needs an urgent change to the testing software, fish moves fast.

"I forwarded the email to my boss, who stayed late in order to talk to the manager over the phone -- there's a six-hour time difference between our locations," fish says.

"The next day I was told to go ahead and make the urgent change, even though it meant I had to change my vacation day. Fortunately, this was not a big deal, so I made the change and rushed the urgent fix out and asked the manager to test his change.

"A week went by: No feedback.

"Two weeks went by: The manager promised to test the change.

"Fast forward six months: The manager has not tested this urgent change. I mentioned this to my boss, who stayed late in order to talk to the manager on the phone.

"After a total of nine months, the manager tested the change and informed us that it all worked -- but he urgently needed the report modified.

"Apparently we are having a communication problem over what urgent means."

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