Flashback to the summer of 1998, when this IT pilot fish is hired by a government contractor to work on a specific project — one that needs fish’s particular Oracle skills.

“I was hired because I have successfully worked with Oracle Designer/2000,” fish says. “This task was to replace their system with an Oracle database and design the application using Designer/2000.”

Trouble is, the pipeline for security clearance processing is backed up — it takes more than a month to transfer fish’s clearance. He spends most of that time in the office trying to look busy, because the government customer wants the clearance transferred before fish will be allowed near the project team.

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