Monkey Wrench
We are back talking about $MonkeyPhone, of which I already told about in this tale.
If you've read that tale, it should be clear by now that whoever was part of the "technical" part of the compay were not exactly "experts" in whatever was their main and only purpose and primary source of income. Unfortunately, for unfathomable reasons, we got stuck with a contract for another 3 years with these peoples. I hope to survive it and not go postal about it.
One nice day, our extremely precise HR (that still refers to me as "Daniel" and hasn't came around to change its paper), informs us that a new employee will start to work in "Marketing and Analysis" and he will definitively need a phone. And this was the beginning of the problems.
For the same reasons expressed above, the only way to get a phone is to order it from $Monkey. I dutifully informed everyone interested that we could buy the very same brand and model of phone from several other suppliers, potentially less idiotic than $Monkey and possibly even cheaper, but apparently the "buy phone" bit was mentioned in some very fine print in the contract. Hence, I send a request for 3 phones and associated power adapters.
A week passes by, and I haven't seen even a shadow of a phone, hence another mail is sent with some inquiry if they are still there or run off to some sunny place, and if they did run off, can we consider our contract void? Unfortunately, they answer informing me that they were "busy" and sent an offer for the phones.
Now, the phone price is basically fixed in the contract, and we can only buy phones from them, so why sending me an offer that I cannot refuse and cannot ever change? Anyhow, I send my assense and wait.
Another week goes by... and I still haven't seen any trace of these phones. At this point I send another request, to which I get another answer that "in the last offer we forgot to add the price for the power adapter" so another offer is attached.
First question: what the fuck am I supposed to do with a phone without the corresponding power adapter? Second question: again, the price is always the same, why sending another offer? Third (and most important) question: DO YOU NEED A FUCKING WEEK AND TWO MAILS TO SEND ME A SIGN THAT YOU'RE STILL ALIVE?
Anyhow, I respond with "YEAH! Send me that stuff already!" and wait.
I need to clarify here that getting the phones is only the first step in the chain. The device in itself is useless if is not configured, but before configuring I need to have it and connect it to the network, then I need to send to $Monkey some details like the name of the user and the MacID of the phone and they need to add it to their configuration. That I supposes it means to edit one configuration file that could be done in less than 30 seconds. Operation that is billed separately, just if it wasn't clear already.
Another week goes by... I think you got the trend here...
After waiting for over than a month, we finally gets our fucking phones. I don't have to specify that I got the phones on monday, without power adapters, and the power adapters arrived on thursday in a separate box do I? At this point I can finally proceed with the second step in this chinese torture of sort: configuring the phone.
Get the phone out of its box, plug it into the network, login in the web console, write down the macid and send yet another e-mail with all the required details.
Obviously, another week goes by! And finally, I get a phone call from the on-call monkey that informs me that they can do the configuration and if we can setup a date and time when we can do that. I answer "right here and now, what's the problem?" So the monkey is going to operate "live"... Well, the configuration should be done, I reboot the phone and... nope. Doesn't work. The phone complaints that "configuration file is missing or invalid".
I was expecting that...
The monkey is now sweating like... a sweating monkey and start messing around. After a bit it tells me that he need to study the problem and call me back.
The next day, I begin at 9 am to ping them to know when can we finish this thing that has already taken more than a month. But apparently, pressing them I sent their brains in full meltdowns. After a few attempts, the phone it's still non functional and keep complaining that the 'configuration file is missing or invalid'.
The same thing repeat for about 3 days, during which at least 3 attempts are made to try to have the stupding thing to work, always with the same result.
By now, TWO MONTHS have passed from the moment I asked for the phones, and the result is that I have the phones but apparently it's too fucking difficult for them to make them usable.
After a series of phone conversation, the chief-Monkey inform me that "they have done everything fine on their side and the problem is evidently in my network, as such if we want to proceed they will have to contact an external consultant to came here and check what is the problem in my network and we will have to foot the bill".
Once I finished yelling (one of our polish developers told me that he didn't understood anything I was saying but he got the general idea), I decided it was the time to break the big guns.
Grab the fucking phone. The "configuration" in the phone itself is a single url to point the phone to a "provisionin server" that is nothing more than a webserver. Configure our Intranet server.
Reboot the phone.
Check in the intranet's log file what the phone wants.
It's looking for a file called 'dect_MACIDOFTHEPHONE.cfg
Check the macid of a functioning phone.
wget http://the.monkey.provisioni.server/dect_macidofthefunctioningphone.cfg
Got a file.
wget http://the.monkey.provisioni.server/dect_macidoftheNONfunctioningphone.cfg
404. File not found. WHAT A SURPRISE!
Look what's inside that .cfg file.
Nothing much. Ok, make up a .cfg file that could possibly work and put it on the Intranet server.
Reboot the phone.
The phone get the .cfg, connect to $Monkey server and after a bit announce that everything is okey-dokey and it works. After checking with a couple of phone calls, I can confirm that this phone now works as intended.
To verify, factory reset, set everything as per instruction (provisionin server to $Monkey server) and the phone complains that the configuration file is missing or invalid. Ok, the mistery is solved: the $Monkeys are idiots.
I prepare a mail with explanations and send it over.
Obviously... I get no answer whatsoever. Until I start banging them repeatedly. And after a couple of days... They admit that, probably, there was a small misconfiguration on their part.
I suggested to send them an invoice for a few hundreds euros for "consultancy and technical troubleshooting", since we basically did their job. Another doubt I espressed was what that phantomatic "conslutant" should have deubugged in our network, if it was to confirm what we alredy knew, that $Monkey are idiots, I could do that too with pleasure. I could even inform them of the fact multiple times a day. I could schedule a script to phone them and inform then using a voice synthesizer.
Unfortunately, the boss decided that was better to avoid the matter.
Now I have two more phones to configure...
Davide
17/03/2018 13:13
e ancora 
