Yes. It can get this bad. I keep getting questions on whether node.js is better than what we have (Netty (Java) and Twisted (Python)). I told them there shouldn't be any major differences with our existing use cases (primarily pub-sub) but the manager was insistent we try it out.
So I took out a week to produce a test case to show him the difference was statistically insignificant and not worth the costs involved in porting. I think his head exploded.