Ah, the life of a consultant. Isn’t it so glamorous, with all our jetting around in airplanes and staying in fancy hotels? Always the ones getting bumped up to first class, or enjoying the little extras and perks just for being who we are!

Yeah, that might seem how it is on the surface, but the reality is that we’re in the trenches and always only one major F-up away from a resume generating event (aka- doing something seemingly harmless that gets you fired).

Yesterday, I had just a little bit of a brush with one of these resume generating events.

Currently I’m working on a large data migration for a major organization in the Midwest. When you’re dealing with thousands and thousands of user’s data, you want to automate the process of moving their bits around as much as possible, but at the same time, one misstep can literally cripple an organization with a global reach!

So, yesterday I’m sitting at my laptop, hammering away at a script that will handle a small chunk of this migration process. We’re staging everything, testing it thoroughly in a virtual environment, and things are coming along pretty well. I’m feeling good about my geek skillz, the project seems on time and maybe, just maybe if this all works out I’ll get to head back to my room before 8pm after getting up at 3:45am to hit the road to get to the client site by 10am.  Still think consulting is glamorous?

I get an email from a senior consultant with a list of users that we’re migrating this afternoon. My script appears good to go. We’re in business! I’m pumped.

I take the spreadsheet, reformat is appropriately and dump it into the directory with my script so that it can be parsed through. I launch powershell, hammer in a few commands and BAM! The script runs with success, no errors.

I give the thumbs up to my senior consultant. He goes to check my work, and I start poking around at Google plus looking for cheap LOLZ from my OGs of Google+- the Buzz boys (yes, we all actually used to use Google Buzz).

My senior walks over to me and says, “What the hell man, you dumped all the users in the incorrect location. Did you read the updated requirements in my email?”

Oh shit….

My mistake was a relatively small one, but only small because it encompassed a small pilot group of users. I was going to try to un-script what I’d done, but was told I’d only mess it up worse. Dig out all the users by hand and delete them.

It took me about an hour and a half to get back to where I should have been IF I’D SIMPLY READ THE UPDATED EMAIL!

So, learn from my mistakes my dear readers- read the requirements first JACKASS!

Shane

Shane is much more than guy who blogs in khakis. He's a graduate student, professional IT/IS nerd, entrepreneur, father-and most of all- total badass. He has explored the world in search of truth, and returned a wise man beyond his years. Join him on this blog and become a fellow Khakian!

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