I made unnecessary work for my lead tonight, after he did me a favour. Let me give you a piece of advice, don’t make extra work for your superiors at your job.
Before going home, my lead graciously left his computer unlocked so that I could test my changes on his machine as well, giving me a better idea of how my stuff was all working.
When I went to get my code changes off the Perforce server, I promptly overwrote three of his files, stuff that he’d been working on but hadn’t checked in yet. So you’re probably wondering how it’s possible to clobber files if everyone is under source control. Here’s the “funny” part, my lead never actually checks out files for edit until he’s ready to check in. When he edits files, he sets the permissions locally to overwrite, bypassing the source control until he’s good and ready to contact the Perforce server.
Of course, I knew he works that way but I guess it was kinda late and I reversed two steps, thereby blowing away his current changes. I realized what I had done about a second after it happened and thought that this is why I’m not a lead, and probably won’t be for a very, very long time.
I wrote him an e-mail apologizing for my error. Then I went upstairs, got a Coffee Crisp and placed it on his keyboard with a Post-It on it saying, “Sorry.” I may also buy him lunch tomorrow if he wants.
Now I know I shouldn’t have erased his changes but if I could mention one thing… you’re really not supposed to be using source control like that. As soon as you try to save any changes on any file, it should be immediately placed under source control. I’m totally owning up to this but I’m just sayin’!
Oh, I’m pretty sure I think I set him back about 15 minutes worth of work… I think… let’s hope I’m right.