I absolutely agree with that. Why [font="Arial Black"]DOES [/font]production data have garbage in it!!!! And I also agree that the bums who designed a system to allow such garbage shouldn't have ever received a paycheck never mind a fat bonus.

However...

I think you're being sarcastic when you say that you like to "hear others opinion especially from SMART people like you." Let us truly consider why the database has garbage in it. Could it be that a bunch of people with the same attitude (or lack of) towards the sanctity of the data as what you stated in your article wrote the database?

There's another aspect to some of these "urgent ad hoc reports" that people don't consider and that I've been privy to a couple of times now. You flat out don't know what the report is for. In fact, your manager may not know what the report is for. (S)he may have been directed to have his/her people produce the report and it could be for something like a police investigation to determine who possible suspects are based on their last charge date. Your willy nilly and thoughtless change may have either put an innocent person in harms way or may have kept a guilty person from being considered because it may have been the year or the month that was in error and not the day. You should have reported the discrepancy instead of taking matters into your own hands.

If you're going to be a data professional, then be professional even if you think you're an underpaid professional. Like I said, data isn't the only thing that's supposed to have integrity.

And drop the bit about emotions driving this... I'm not the one that decided to get sarcastic here.