Some other programmer: ABC company is having problems printing their packing slip.

Me: What's the problem?

Programmer: It's printing the extra address fields and it's not supposed to. Their customizations are missing.

Me: That's odd... did they recently have a server crash or something?

Programmer: Not that I know of.

Me: Well when did this start happening? I just talked to them last week about something else and they said everything's been working fine lately. They're pretty open-and-shut, as far as clients go.

Programmer: It's been happening since about Wednesday of last week. Right after their upgrade.

Me: "Upgrade"? I had no idea they upgraded. Well in that case, one of their modifications must have been overwritten by the upgraded version.

Programmer: Oh. Well, you'll probably want to give Jane a call there. They really need this fixed.

Me: (confused) Why would I want to give them a call?

Programmer: Because their packing slip doesn't print right! They really need this working. Who else would fix something like this?

Me: Uh, normally the person who did their upgrade and overwrote their modifications. Who did their upgrade?

Programmer: I did.

Me: Ah. Well, My guess is that the program got overwritten in the upgrade, so you'll want to do a file comparison between their original code and the new version to see if their mod got missed.

Programmer: I'm not going to do that... you are.

Me: Uh... no. Anyway, once you find the mod, just migrate the modified code into the new version of the program on their live system, recompile, and that should be it. Pretty simple.

Programmer: Well, that's all I figured it would take. I'll let Jane know you'll be calling her and dialing in to look at this.

Me: No, it won't be me fixing this. That's not my job.

Programmer: You're client support for programming, right?

Me: Right.

Programmer: Well this is a client support issue.

Me: Nope. The client had a modification that YOU overwrote when doing their upgrade. YOU should do a modification flush on any client system before just blindly upgrading them, and YOU should know that. And since a mod got missed, then YOU have to fix it. That's how it works with every other programmer we have, including me, and including you. When Dave does upgrades for clients and misses mods, DAVE fixes the problems. When Carl does upgrades for clients and misses mods, CARL fixes the problem. When I do upgrades for clients and miss mods, I fix the problem. When YOU do an upgrade for a client and YOU miss a mod, then YOU fix the problem.

Programmer: Well, I'll call Jane and tell her you'll be dialing in to look at this.
(hangs up)

So be it. I just called this programmer's supervisor and let him know what just happened. This happens with this person about once a week, and I'm getting sick to death of cleaning up after her screwups.

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