issues with authority

Apparently I take issue with stupid authority too:

We just had a power outage. The whole building went dark. Not great if you are the power company. It came up within less than a minute, but since I work in IT and in the same building where the servers are at I hear all the “Oh no!” panic statements about the servers and the work that other programmers had lost.

Our DBA says “Man, if the servers went down I’m losing the whole days’ work”. Fortunately he didn’t since the server room is protected and on a huge UPS. We also have power strips along all the walls in our (stupid, stupid) semi-open office plan. Some have bright orange plugs and I recall being told they were wired the UPS. I ask the DBA if he was plugged into one. He says “No, I was told not to use them by power on high.” I ask, but why? And follow up with emphatic “I want to know why”.

So some guy from the group that does our IT support comes over to my area. I’m not a fan of this guy to begin with and the fact that he overhears all our conversations and feels the need to comment irks me. He snarkily says the reason we can’t use the UPS plugs is because it is connected to the server room and “if you want to keep the servers alive then don’t use it.”

I can feel my blood boiling as I try to keep a calm façade. “Then why were they even installed in a common work area if they should not be used?” I ask.

I don’t have an answer for that.

Screw you authority. You make no sense!