Tales from the Night Shift QA - the Ultimate Shemale

Prologue

As a disclaimer, I am aware that the term that I’m using might be considered offensive by today’s social norms. These stories take place almost a decade ago. I did not coin the term back then; It was the nomenclature that I learned working at the QA lab. The potentially offensive terminology will not be changed to keep historical accuracy.??

Office policy is that employees would lock his computer when leaving one’s workstation to prevent any form of leaking information.?

?In the QA lab, if you found an unattended and unlocked workstation, you were allowed to “shemale” the person’s windows, which meant downloading a really awkward but safe for work image and setting it as the desktop background. The picture of the unicorn man was the default image everyone used. The person getting their computer “shemaled” had to keep the image up for the remainder of the shift. It was a shaming tactic.?

Side note 1: I’ve worked in two other software companies where “donutting” is the accepted form of punishing someone for leaving an unattended computer unlocked. “Donutting” is done by writing in the company's chat: “Hello Team, tomorrow I’m going to bring in donuts for everyone!” The next time the donuted person looks at his screen, he’ll notice that he offered donuts to everyone, and that his colleagues replied back saying how nice that is of him and how they are looking forward to tomorrow’s treat. Not locking your screen can cost you 10-20$ worth of donuts and pastries.

Story 1 - the love letter

I did set the Unicorn Man picture on a great number of unlocked window sessions, but that got old pretty fast.

How about the time that a new male employee didn’t lock his computer, so I wrote an email (in his name) to the project lead, who was this no-nonsense muscle head. The email reads:?

"Dear Sir,

I think that you're a really nice guy. I was wondering if there was a chance that we could get to know each other better, maybe outside of the office.”

The lead wasn’t a nice guy. Maybe he was outside of the office, but I’ve never known him to be anything remotely nice.?

This was a Friday night end of shift. Monday at the start of shift, I see the Project Lead walking with clenched fists muttering something angrily to himself. I see my buddy, Fred, walk up and talk to him. I overheard Fred tell him: “...it was Jason who wrote that email, not the n00b. He was shemaled.” I had forgotten over the weekend what I had done, and upon hearing Fred, and understanding what was going on I started laughing. The lead gives me the evil eye, and says: “Jason, you idiot! I was on my way to give the kid hell!”

Story 2 - the complete 180

The unicorn man picture as a desktop background is pretty funny and harmless for a n00b’s first offense, but we’d get innovative when shemaling a veteran QA. Knowing this, I almost never forget to lock my PC... almost.?

I remember returning to my work station after a bathroom break and then noticing that I hadn’t locked my session. At first, I thought my colleagues let this one slip, but they didn’t. One of my friends, Martin, had taken a screenshot of my desktop (folders and all), rotated it 180 degrees and set that as a background.?

He didn’t stop there, he also rotated the display by 180 degrees (making the background look normal). He then inverted the mouse controls.?

My night shift friends were laughing at my inability to navigate on my desktop. It was admittedly pretty damn funny.

Martin then tells me that I have to keep it that way until the end of the shift. “Rules are Rules!” he said. He was right. It was just near impossible to get anything done without a lot of profanity, and I didn’t know how to fix it myself. I asked him to kindly revert his changes so that I could work. He complied. Nice guy Martin.?

Story 3 - Dylan’s mom

I’ll start this story by talking about Josee and Dylan. Josee was in charge of the payroll, but her real role was to be the QA Lab’s maternal figure. She was the most human person in all of the Lab’s corporate management team, and the person who thought of watering the houseplants in the office. When I had any work related issue and I required some sort of resolution, I’d go see Josee.

Dylan was Josee’s son. He was a teenager when he started working at the lab. I was asked to mentor Dylan to which I gladly agreed. I took Dylan under my wing and taught him everything I knew about being a QA.

I gave Dylan the tough love he required, acting as equal parts teacher and bully. He needed to learn the trade of QA, but also needed to learn how to deal with the constant verbal sparring that occurred during the night shift. The way we spoke would have embarrassed old timey sailors.

I had found a folder in the social club drive containing pictures of the employees from a previous Halloween. Josee’s costume was an Avatar Cosplay, so she was wearing a skin tight blue bodysuit.

Dylan was renowned for forgetting to lock his computer and I took great pleasure in changing his desktop background to be his own mother in a sexy outfit. I don’t know how many times I did this to Dylan; dozens of times at least. I got to know the path to the picture on the drive so well that I could change Dylan’s background in less than 10 seconds. And every time he’d get back to his station I’d hear him say: “Oh come on! That’s my mom, dude!”

Dylan tried to get back at me once, changing my background to the same picture. Joke’s on him: I kept the Josee Background on my workstation for a week, reminding Dylan every day.

Sidenote 2: I worked with Dylan for a total of 8 years, in two different studios, and were good friends today. He’s a rock solid QA ninja and any Dev team would be lucky to have him.??

Story 4 - the ultimate shemale?

With the title of the story, I promised to tell you the ultimate shemaling story.

The worst time to leave your workstation unlocked is when you finished your shift. This meant that the other shift had a whole 8 to 12 hours to think of a great way to shemale you.

One shift, I came into work and I discovered this unattended workstation. Naturally, I started looking for a picture to use as a desktop background. While doing so, the night shift IT, Hugo, walks by and asks me what I’m doing. “I’m just shemaling a noob.” I replied. “Let me do it!” he said with an evil grin. I moved out of the way to let him do his magic.

He starts by changing the background to a solid hot pink. I remember thinking to myself: “Well, this is a little underwhelming…” He then changed every icon on the desktop to the same solid hot pink color. He proceeds to change the toolbar to hot pink, the dialogue boxes to hot pink, the text to hot pink, the cursor to hot pink…all of the windows UI to hot pink.?

A crowd of night shifters had gathered around the work station. We were all giggling like school children. Hugo then locks the computer, bricking the workstation for the n00b forever.

From second hand stories, the day shift tester started his shift the next day, entered his ID and password, and was welcomed with a whole lot of hot pink. The day shift IT could not revert the changes, the n00b could no longer log in to that specific PC, so had to move to another workstation. The ultimate shemale.?