Once an asshole generally always an asshole...

So yesterday I had an engineer at my desk. This is not unusual. The particular engineer was. I've worked with the guy years ago, and he's always been an ass. He's one of those engineers who looks down on anyone who isn't an engineer, and yet, he's one of the more inept engineers I know.

One who  used to ask us to do the stupidest things to prove that the bug wasn't his. He used to play ostrich in a big way and make it sound like the testers were inventing problems to make him look bad, never mind the fact that he couldn't debug a simple problem if it bit him in the ass.

This particular fellow is more socially inept then he is in development, so while waiting for testers to reproduce issues he generally manages to piss them off good and proper with salliant non-work related, none of his business questions that make people boil.

Luckily he's been put on more obscure projects that have rarely interfaced with me or my team in years. But yesterday he seemed to think despite having burnt all his bridges with me years ago, that I'd gladly help him out with his problems. From what I understood he trashed his development system.  While he didnt' manage to get otehrs to re-install for him, now he's trying to get others to setup his development environment, and to that end he came and see me yesterday for my "Newbie wiki".

The good thing is I don't have a newbie wiki. I had to argue the point. He was convinced there was one and I was holding back. The information he wanted to know is in the back of my checklists in the "How to" section. However he's the kind of asshole, who would not benefit from the information but who would take my checklist and tear me a new one, even though it has nothing to do with anything he's doing and though he has worked on display drivers, he would not know how to test one if it hit him in the face. 

So I told him I could not help him. I had to yell it at the end because he became incredibly pushy and would not take no for an answer.

The sad part is, if it had been anyone else in the company including a totally new employee, I would have went out of my way to be helpful. 

Moral of the story - don't be an ass to others, don't burn your bridges. You never know when that stupid Software Quality assurance dumbass can be of help.