Yes, they really said it, and all on the same project.
Support engineer of a major (global) vendor, after we ran a command at his direction:
"Oh, that's unexpected."
VP of the implementation company, which had already been paid $800,000+ for contractor personnel, 13 months into the project and on the night of moving to production:
"What are we trying to accomplish here?"
Level 3 support manager, when asked how we should explain to senior management why a problem had not been solved after 8 weeks:
"It's just a really hard problem."
But (a few days later)
"We have the best of the best working on it." Shades of Men in Black. It was all I could do to not break up laughing on the conference call.
When all is said and done, remember the wisdom of one of our UNIX server engineers:
"Screaming doesn't cause the VCR to stop flashing, nor does a management decree."No worries. "It isn't designed not to fail."
