I hate Oracle: Redux

What is the easiest way to piss off a developer? Have a know-nothing-annoying sales shrill call him up during a coding streak.

You know the thing, you are in the zone, code is poring out of you like sweat from an NFL lineman. You bleed logic. Then the phone rings -- rips you out of phase.

"Hello, is this Mr. Chris Brandsma" says a female voice in broken English, obviously from some peninsular shaped country in south Asia. "Yes it is." I reply, ungratefully at best.

The dread doesn't set in until she says "I'm from Oracle" and you know this conversation isn't going to go anywhere. She starts off by asking if this is a bad time. "Yes it is", "Can I call back sometime later, say tomorrow?" "More like next month." "Next MONTH!! But, this will only take 5 minutes, is that OK?"

"OK, 5 minutes"

That was mistake number two. Mistake number one was to answer the phone when caller ID just said "Outside caller", not a good sign. She starts off by saying that I had downloaded something last week...uhm, no, actually I haven't. She insisted. I retorted and got more annoyed. This went on for a couple more go rounds, the she said she miss-read the info and that it was last month. Nope, still wrong. Neither of us are taking this very well now.

So I understand that somewhere in the bowels of the Oracle marketing training camp, that comes with complementary cool-aid and Borg implants, there is some marketing guru that explains to all the nice young inductees that all of their customer are blathering idiots not worthy to like their shoes. I'm sure he is extolling the virtues of Oracle and how it can solve ALL of their customer’s problems. All that these masses of faceless, degenerate customers have to do is hire their consultants and nirvana will commence on the spot.

This is apparent in the next part of the conversation that took place. "Are you starting any initiatives that we at Oracle could help you with?", "No, not really." For some reason, I felt like being honest instead of saying: "Yes, you could leave me alone." But that would have been too honest. "Is there any way we could help you with any current initiatives you are currently working on?" Great, next we can start talking about allocating "resources", heaven forbid you start calling things by what they are: Projects and People. I guess that is not politically correct. But the truth is, this lady was absolutely certain that I had some initiative going on somewhere in some where that Oracle could help me with it -- all she had to do was drag this mythical initiative out of me. Apparently they train these people that their customers are liers too.

It also seems that the training does not come with a stop watch to let the poor cool-aid drinking marketing training inductee know when 5 minutes has passed. She went well over the allotted 5 minutes, and when I told her this she pleaded for another two.

Then I got terse. Something about having a sales shrill (from any company) talking in pointy-haired management/marketing speech trying to get me to discuss what I'm doing as a way to extort more cash does not get me in a good mood. I think my attitude could be best described by some of my more God fearing friends as: Pissy.

My response: "I don’t like Oracle, OK. My current initiatives involve removing Oracle from the planet. Your product ghastly large, the install is astronomical and requires a PHD with the patience of a saint to install." I also said something about reducing the size of the .NET provider (currently 80 MB, while the entire .NET Framework is 24 MB).

Once that tirade had complete I simply said that the 5 minutes was up and hung up on her -- she was still talking. Apparently she still thought I was a potential customer waiting for advice on the latest Oracle initiative.

Unfortunately, I’m still sitting here in a pissy mood, coding mojo gone, and now I’m just waiting for the clock to hit 5:00 pm. I hate sales reps, I hate Oracle, and I hate phone calls while coding.

Here is hoping for tomorrow.