Sorry But I Can't Hold It In Any Longer

OK, I promised myself I would wait at least a month after leaving my current job before posting any bad stories about it, but I just can't hold this one in. My project has a custom filetype associated with it. I wrote code to parse the command-line arguments and open the file, like so:

myexe.exe -f "c:\filename"

So I was surprised when I came in to work this morning and my file association/command line code didn't work. I check the history in version control and find that my esteemed coworker, Pat*, had changed it. I decided to be diplomatic (since I didn't want to piss off people to whom I would not have a chance to reverse any more impressions) and sent out an email to the team:

Did someone change the code for using command line arguments for file associations? All of a sudden this morning I can't double-click and run a file. It looks like someone modified the command line stuff...

I get this response from Pat:

I fixed it, as it was broken. Come over and I'll explain.

(Note: this is one of Pat's annoying tendencies. When he has to explain something he did that invariably is a bad idea or mistake, he always wants to explain in person.) So I trot my butt over there to listen to his story. Turns out when he was setting up our project to work with our deployment software, he entered in the file association code the same as his last project. That is to say, without the space between the "-f" and the filename. So obviously the association wouldn't work.

Instead of adding the space to his code, or even bothering to look and discover what was wrong, he edited the source code of the project to work his way, which of course broke the rest of our builds once he checked in the code. Then he had the gall to suggest that this problem was my fault!

Thank God I'm outta there.

* All names have been changed to protect the incompetent.