Incisive questioning
Not so long ago the company for which I work hired an outside company to do some work for us. It was all fine, except for one guy who would never, ever, under any circumstances admit he didn't know something. When faced with a situation where he felt he might show weakness by admitting ignorance, he would either bluster for Britain or (more usually) make up something or other that sounded credible to him. This works in some types of business but when you need a precise technical response to a query it's rather irritating to get vague and inaccurate nonsense instead.

It was a trying time and as it is no shock that I was bitching about this idiot in the pub one evening. Evidently, however, I was not doing a great job of explaining as one of my colleagues, an extremely sharp programmer from Romania, said she didn't follow what I meant by this "bullshitting".

"Okay," says I. "I'll give you an example through the medium of role play." I closed my eyes and, channelling Stanislavsky, assumed the part of the fantasist contractor. "Now, ask me a question to which I don't know the answer."

"Pineapplecharm," she said. "Are you gay?"
( pineapplecharm D d M Y, H:i, Sat 15 Jan 2011, 0:51, 4 replies)

Fantastic!
*click*
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Sat 15 Jan 2011, 11:42, closed)

Now this, I like
Clicks for you.
(ConanTroutman thought we would free the vulture, Sat 15 Jan 2011, 18:50, closed)

top class
*click*
( lucosade is counting down the minutes until, Mon 17 Jan 2011, 14:15, closed)

Oi!
"when you need a precise technical response to a query it's rather irritating to get vague and inaccurate nonsense instead."

That's probably all you'd get from me without letting me look back at my code or the spec. I'm not a terrible programmer, I just seem to be living the life of the guy from Memento if rather than avenging his wife's death he wrote code for a living.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Mon 17 Jan 2011, 22:22, closed)