Okay, I goofed. I screwed up. I admit it. I made an unreviewed, unapproved change to a server at work, and the server was down for half a day as a result. But I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition...
Background: I noticed that one of our servers was not running its application at startup. So I set it up so it would. Unfortunately, I used the wrong login ID, so the server was not able to process any work for half a day until the problem was resolved.
As a result, I got chewed.
What gripes me about this is that I was trying to be proactive, to head off a problem before it became a PROBLEM. And it wasn't even my problem. If this had come up, no one would have come to me and demanded to know why I hadn't fixed it. I was trying to help out someone else. Not to mention the fact that this modification has already been made on the FIFTEEN OTHER FREAKIN' SERVERS that run this application.
First, I freely admitted that A) I screwed up, B) I was sorry, and C) It wouldn't happen again.
Really, what else did they need to hear me say? But instead we needed an all day post-mortem.
Second, do you really want to establish a corporate culture in which doing nothing at all is preferable to trying to fix something, even if it sometimes leads to mistakes? In that culture the employee who does as little as possible has better prospects than one who tries to take the initiative in making things better. And I'm sorry, butt-covering is not my first instinct in most cases.
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Quote Of The Day: Background: A large pharmaceuticals company is laying off upwards of 4000 people, possibly including our next-door neighbor.
Wife: "The terrorists have won!" Me: "Ah, I don't think they had anything to do with this." Wife: "You watch. In 20 years they'll find out Osama bin Laden is behind it." Me (laughing): "Okay, Nostradumbass."
UPDATE: Apparently I am not the first person to think of this.
