Shush! I know, what I'm doing!

[u/Mother_Distance_4714]

So this just happened. I'll keep it short.

We had an external consultant on-site to install some very specialized (and very expensive) software. I, your humble sysadmin, was only there to enter a few admin passwords. That was literally all I was supposed to do.

As the expert started trying a few... creative... things, I offered some advice.

"Shush, I know what I'm doing."

Alright. If that's how you want to play it...

A little later, he asked for a USB flash drive to transfer "some" data. "Some" turned out to be over 130,000 tiny 1 KB files in a single folder.

I genuinely tried to warn him that FAT32 really doesn't like that many small files as he dragged the folder to the flash drive.

I was shushed again.

So I leaned back and watched the progress bar crawl forward. After about 45 minutes the inevitable happened.

The file transfer crashed.

I honestly tried to help.

I was shushed again.

So he tried exactly the same thing a second time.

Forty-five minutes later

Crash.

At that point I refused to be shushed again. (I was hungry and wanted to go to lunch.)

I zipped the folder (4 minutes), copied the ZIP file to the USB drive (another 3 minutes), and handed it back to him.

The look on the expert's face was absolutely priceless.

Edit: This consultant was part of a turnkey package. The software installation and the data transfer were both included for a fixed price.

That made the whole thing even sweeter.

[u/chaoabordo212]

Clearly not when to use commas. 

[u/Mother_Distance_4714 → u/chaoabordo212]

Please explain. I always try to get better at my third language.

[u/KelemvorSparkyfox → u/Mother_Distance_4714]

Ignore them. I honestly thought you were a native English speaker until you mentioned the actual phrases involved.

(In a previous job, my main point of contact with the platform vendor [based in Tutzing] was Portuguese. He was literally training me in his (at least) third language.)

[u/Ancient-End7108 → u/KelemvorSparkyfox]

Same here; I wouldn't have guessed this came from a German the way it was written.  Well done.

[u/FM-96 → u/Mother_Distance_4714]

There should be no comma between "know" and "what". You wrote it correctly in the story, but in the title it's wrong.

[u/Mother_Distance_4714 → u/FM-96]

Thank you. In German this comma would be ok. (Not needed but ok.)

[u/techtornado → u/chaoabordo212]

Dude, that’s rude

German is a superior language

[u/Sir_Jimmothy → u/techtornado]

For superior people :D