My Spec V Forum | serboard | SRADD | Altima Coupe | Car Show Judges | My Track Times | Versa Forum | No Front Plate | Ask Mysql DBA | g-rov | Spoiled Bengal | HMG Photos | PHP Hacking | Blatant Lies | Shame Donuts | gurov's LinkedIn

[ main page | post a shame donut story | read shame donut stories ]

Shame Donuts (an apologetic gesture)

If you work in the IT field, you've surely seen people screw up, they run that SQL query that wipes out a column on a massive table. The DB team gets to stay late on a friday night to clean up the mess. Or someone unplugs your production database from the network at the datacenter and you have to fail over via an SSH tunnel to a database in a remote location. These things happen, sure, and while you ARE getting paid for your time, the person who did the damage MUST PAY ! This is where shame donuts come in. Shame donuts are a nice gesture to say that you are sorry for botching that query, or murdering one of your standby MySQL slaves by pointing a read/write production app to it.

Shame donut should in no way be offensive or forced, it should be up to individual to volunteer his time and money to bring in a box of donuts for the team. They are meant to lift people's spirits and remind them that it's not the end of the world and that once you get through the task of restoring the database from someone else's screwup, plugging your production database back into the network, or whatever it is that was violated, things will get better, and donuts will await you in the morning.

the boxes

So what happens after the dust has settled, shame donuts are eaten and enjoyed greately, fun is made of how silly the mistake was ? The box stays ! The box is a monument that will serve as a reminder to others. Pick up whatever scraps of paper you used to document the cleanup process and the original place you spotted the problem, highlight the username, query, command in the history, and anything else that you think should've thrown a flag. The purpose of this ritual is to be able to answer the "what's the box for ?" question that many people will surely ask. Make sure to write "Shame Donuts"(.com - shameless plug) on the clorful box to clearly identify it as a result of Shame Donut worthy action.

Use in the office

"Oh man, so I heard there was a massive outtage last night, what happened ?"
"Someone wiped the DB credentials for a critical service and didn't bother to test it"
"Someone should notify them to bring in shame donuts, that's messed up"

the history

MY explanation originated during my time at the Vonage Network in 2007, There was a large office network outtage which was apparently explained by someone plugging a switch into the network that created a packet storm and took down the whole office net for a good hour and a half. Next morning there was a box of donuts that the responsible person brought in. At this point shame donuts were born.