It was the first week of my first professional, corporate job.

I had managed to get a job in a Technical Support team of a growing fintech startup.

That particular day, part of the training I was doing involved becoming familiar with how customer data was stored. During the first week there as a lot of information I had to learn, and I had forgotten a lot of it. Including how to access the database. I was considering asking another colleague if they knew how to access the database.

Then I noticed that someone in Level 3 support had written some database details down on a post-it note. They weren't at their desk, so I reached over and took the note. I changed I logged in, found the Customer database and started looking through it.

The database was using SQL and I was keen to practice my SQL knowledge on a real database. One command lead to another and soon I was modifying and deleting records across different tables, safe in the knowledge that this was a database used for training purposes.

The Technical Support manager came over and said to me "Oh you found the table, great. You can select the database here..." and he reached over my shoulder to point at SQL Server's Object Explorer window. Then he paused and leaned in for a closer look at my screen. I was thinking proudly to myself "he's probably seen the SQL queries I've written. I know, I know. Pretty good for a newbie, right?"

He turned to me. His face was red.

With his teeth clenched, he leaned really close to me and he slowly and quietly seethed this is the Production database.

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I have been working in Software Development for more than 16 years. So I've got a lot of experiences and stories to share. My current professional area of focus is Quality Engineering. I write about software quality and try to add a bit of humour, philosophy and productivity. I like Integration Tests and favour BDD.