I know the feeling
I once worked for a firm that used to sell all sorts of financial products (and holidays) to old people.

One particular director kept on at me to make sure one of the databases was backed up properly. (This is what happens when you let users have MS Access, they start with a tiny little database and before you know it a whole chunk of their business is relient on the piss-poorly written lump of shite.)

Anyway, I stuffed it on a network drive (this was the days of Windows 3.0), but was told by 'networking' that it 'couldn't stay there' - it's a live application.

Fine, so I asked for a purchase order to buy some backup software - "No" was the answer.

I tried to use that really crap windows scheduler that came with the early versions of Windows - you may remember the one. Sometimes it did what it was supposed to, and sometimes it didn't.

Most days I had to use pkzip (not Winzip, oh no, that would have cost 30 dollars or similar) this ever increasing .mdb file across several floppys and put it on another desktop machine.

One week I was off ill. You guessed it. Shedule didn't work, no-one else had backed it up.

Yet, somehow, without any funding, or assistence from 'networking' and despite my not actually being there, this was my fault. When I pointed out that if it was that important it might have been worth spending 50 quid or so on some backup software, or an hour of someone's time in IT, I was very quickly shouted down.

The bloke was a nob. I'm suprised he didn't question why we even wanted paying to be honest.
(dchurch bah, Sat 6 Sep 2008, 19:23, Reply)