'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
The programmers were harried and clicking a mouse;
Their socks were half on, and disheveled their hair,
In fear that the boss would soon be there;
The legacy code was many messy testbeds,
Yet its failure to work would be on their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Craved nothing more than a long winter's nap;
When out of the speakers there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my seat and released abdominal matter.
To the Skype window I clicked with some fear,
For I knew the boss's wrath soon would be near.
With pointy hair as white as a new-fallen snow,
Were bushy eyebrows on the forehead below,
When what to my disappointment should I see,
It was the boss [again], checking up on me.
He was demanding, unreasonable, and a pesky old fool.
Everyone at work thinks he's a tool.
More rapid than eagles come his critiques,
Of everyone's habits and coding techniques.
"Now Smith, now Jones, now Howard and Dixon!
On Charles, on Carol, on Dan-o and Nixon!
To Visual Studio, to Windows, to DOS Prompt and all,
Keep writing more code, and fix my firewall!"
Assigned workload and expectations soared high,
But no feedback was accepted, not even a sigh;
With control of the paycheck and workers needing holiday dough,
The boss knew that everyone there was oh so his 'ho.
And there in the Skype window he was nagging,
About why the code wasn't done and my efforts were sagging.
As I opened my mouth to give a reply,
He assigned yet more work in the blink of an eye.
He piled on more tasks to be done A.S.A.P.,
Numerous jobs were there, all top priority.
First code fixes for the software to be done in the next hour,
Website changes next, after checking the server rack power,
Afterwards on to new features to the new product release,
Then maybe, just maybe, a brief moment of peace.
Work through Christmas dinner getting TPS reports done,
Then to debugging the software with a test run.
The list went on and scrolled out of sight,
With no way to finish, try as I might,
But complaint was no option with a job list this crazy,
For any suggestion of impossibility would just brand me lazy.
I laughed at the absurdity in spite of myself,
At the mission impossible given by the evil elf.
With a glare of this eye and twist of his head,
Soon gave me notice of coming announcement of dread;
He spoke not a word, but told me to get straight to work,
And shortened my deadlines, relishing being a jerk.
Pointing his finger at me as he turned up his nose,
The Skype open session he was beginning to close.
An eternity later, he ran out of things to say,
Maybe now, I can salvage part of my holiday,
But I heard him exclaim as he faded from sight,
"Bah humbug to all, and there's more work tomorrow night!"
The programmers were harried and clicking a mouse;
Their socks were half on, and disheveled their hair,
In fear that the boss would soon be there;
The legacy code was many messy testbeds,
Yet its failure to work would be on their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Craved nothing more than a long winter's nap;
When out of the speakers there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my seat and released abdominal matter.
To the Skype window I clicked with some fear,
For I knew the boss's wrath soon would be near.
With pointy hair as white as a new-fallen snow,
Were bushy eyebrows on the forehead below,
When what to my disappointment should I see,
It was the boss [again], checking up on me.
He was demanding, unreasonable, and a pesky old fool.
Everyone at work thinks he's a tool.
More rapid than eagles come his critiques,
Of everyone's habits and coding techniques.
"Now Smith, now Jones, now Howard and Dixon!
On Charles, on Carol, on Dan-o and Nixon!
To Visual Studio, to Windows, to DOS Prompt and all,
Keep writing more code, and fix my firewall!"
Assigned workload and expectations soared high,
But no feedback was accepted, not even a sigh;
With control of the paycheck and workers needing holiday dough,
The boss knew that everyone there was oh so his 'ho.
And there in the Skype window he was nagging,
About why the code wasn't done and my efforts were sagging.
As I opened my mouth to give a reply,
He assigned yet more work in the blink of an eye.
He piled on more tasks to be done A.S.A.P.,
Numerous jobs were there, all top priority.
First code fixes for the software to be done in the next hour,
Website changes next, after checking the server rack power,
Afterwards on to new features to the new product release,
Then maybe, just maybe, a brief moment of peace.
Work through Christmas dinner getting TPS reports done,
Then to debugging the software with a test run.
The list went on and scrolled out of sight,
With no way to finish, try as I might,
But complaint was no option with a job list this crazy,
For any suggestion of impossibility would just brand me lazy.
I laughed at the absurdity in spite of myself,
At the mission impossible given by the evil elf.
With a glare of this eye and twist of his head,
Soon gave me notice of coming announcement of dread;
He spoke not a word, but told me to get straight to work,
And shortened my deadlines, relishing being a jerk.
Pointing his finger at me as he turned up his nose,
The Skype open session he was beginning to close.
An eternity later, he ran out of things to say,
Maybe now, I can salvage part of my holiday,
But I heard him exclaim as he faded from sight,
"Bah humbug to all, and there's more work tomorrow night!"
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