The Pasa-Loader Strikes Again!

Some people just get on your nerves. Intentionally or not, they just push your buttons.

Ever since I came to this company, we've seen this colleague seemingly taking it very cool inspite of the workload. Then, we learned why: he kept delegating the tasks that he was supposed to be doing and then he'll take credit for it!

Hah! Just when I thought I had no time to read, I checked out the book again because he reminded me of something:

LAW 7: GET OTHERS TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU, BUT ALWAYS TAKE THE CREDIT

Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of effeciency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.

See? Just because you don't follow the 48 Laws of Power (Robert Greene) doesn't mean you don't have to read it! It's useful information that can help you realize situations such as this. If you don't want to apply the laws, at the very least, know when others are applying the law onto you.

Anyway, going back... So this pasa-loader (that is, "load-passer" for lack of a better translation) was really getting on my nerves...

A few months back, he asked that I come with him to check a problem with one of the servers which could only connect other servers on the same subnet. Lightbulb in my mind lit up and my brain kept saying "default gateway". I was right and I fixed it in no time. I explained to him the details, this and that. When the server administrator returnedand asked how it was fixed, before I can even open my mouth to say anything, the pasa-loader explained -- in an expertly tone, I might add -- how he fixed the issue. Took my exact words and claimed them as his own... and right in front of me!

It didn't really matter that he took credit for it, since it was just a small issue. It did, however, made me wary of any favors he would ask. Which did happen just a few days ago... and the flags were raised everywhere!

As the duty network engineer for the month, he has to take on all network-related tasks. One of the recent tasks assigned to him was the renewal and installation of a specific SSL certificate into the proxy servers.

Backgrounder: Being the service administrator of the network proxy servers, I drafted an extensive documentation about the installation and maintenance of SSL certificates in the proxy servers. I made this is a general reference for everyone; I ran into trouble with this same issue before due to some limitation on the part of the proxy server. Hence, this document was specifically intended to prevent that from happening again.

Note: Mistakes in SSL certificates can be costly literally. There are financial concerns since each SSL certificate issued by any recognized certificate authorities such as Verisign, Thawte, and others costs $$$.

After finally managing to get the certificate -- hit some silly roadblocks along the way -- he still asked me to do it for him. Of course, I didn't do it. Instead, I sent him the documentation I created. Remember RTFM? :) The documentation contains detailed step-by-step procedure complete with screenshots. Reviewed it and had it peer-reviewed several times. There's absolutely no excuse for him to not know how to do it.

I then later found out that he kept bugging one of the other team leads and had him do it on his behalf! Geez, can you believe this guy? The team lead actually went away from his desk for some time to work in some other location -- it turns out that he couldn't get anything done because pasa-loader kept bugging him! LOL

Oh well... You guys better watch out for other pasa-loaders like this one. Ugh!