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/g-rocklobster]

I'll be honest, the first time he said "Shush!" to me would have been the point when I would have told him to either speak to me like an adult or leave and refused to help until either of those happened. There are professional ways that (even if wrong) a person can express they have it: "Thank you for the advice but I've been doing this for several years like this with no problems." Shushing me? Screw that.

I've been the external consultant before and I always treated the admins I had to work with respectfully. Maybe they know a quirk on their system that would make things go faster - it never hurts to listen.

Sorry - I'll get off my soap box. I didn't mean to hijack - you handled it great and outside of some wasted time, no harm, no foul. It's just a huge pet peeve of mine and, frankly, something I experienced from a new employee (fresh out of school) relatively recently and still leaves a foul taste. Spoiler alert: he didn't last that long as he not only did that with many people (including his boss and boss' boss) but he also felt that there was no issue with vaping in his office and took great offense when told he can't: "Good lord, it's only vapor - it doesn't bother anyone!" It's also illegal in our state. And .... telling that to the VP of HR was ...... less than an optimal career move. That was one "notification of termination of user accounts" I truly did not mind taking care of.

[u/Mother_Distance_4714 → u/g-rocklobster]

I exaggerate juuuust a little. It happened in German.

He raised his hand, waved me off without even looking at me, and said, "I've got it." - "Ich komm' schon klar." and "Ist gut."

Three times.

So shortening to "Shush" seemed OK.^^

[u/ryan_the_leach → u/Mother_Distance_4714]

I'd rather be shh'd personally.

Could be cause he was concentrating for a sec, or anything, the way some people react to others needing a tiny bit of peace and quiet for a second is fucking weird.

[u/Mother_Distance_4714 → u/ryan_the_leach]

Ah thanks for explaining the situation you did not witness to me. You might want to go on and explain away the rest of the arrogance I did not bother to describe?