From the Desk of TGRR; Corporate Life in the 21st Century (blog)

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Mike has taken an extended vacation.  He has about a million weeks saved up, and he's decided to lay low for a while...Which took more brains than I give him credit for.  I've met his wife, though, and I expect he's being coached.

Filthy Assistant is livid because I gave him his review, and he didn't do well.  He met none of his goals.  He then threw a fit, saying all the shit he DID do.  I explained that we can't just make up our own job descriptions.  He pitched a fit and in the end was sent home without pay again.

Overall, a good week so far.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Mike has taken an extended vacation.  He has about a million weeks saved up, and he's decided to lay low for a while...Which took more brains than I give him credit for.  I've met his wife, though, and I expect he's being coached.

Filthy Assistant is livid because I gave him his review, and he didn't do well.  He met none of his goals.  He then threw a fit, saying all the shit he DID do.  I explained that we can't just make up our own job descriptions.  He pitched a fit and in the end was sent home without pay again.

Overall, a good week so far.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Mike has taken an extended vacation.  He has about a million weeks saved up, and he's decided to lay low for a while...Which took more brains than I give him credit for.  I've met his wife, though, and I expect he's being coached.

Filthy Assistant is livid because I gave him his review, and he didn't do well.  He met none of his goals.  He then threw a fit, saying all the shit he DID do.  I explained that we can't just make up our own job descriptions.  He pitched a fit and in the end was sent home without pay again.

Overall, a good week so far.

Sounds like a good start.  

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So, the problem with bringing my temps on full time...

We have the wet end, which is not profitable.  It is being used, basically, to keep our foot in the door while the new process gets validated with the customers.  The dry end is expanding rapidly to accomodate the new process, and thus I have an insane amount of things to install and/or keep running.  It is at this moment impossible to be profitable, and everyone knows this.  No problem.

But I am told that I can't expand my crew to accomodate the new machinery (I will need these people even - especially - after the wet end shuts down), because we aren't profitable, and they want to be sure that we can be profitable before allowing the personnel expansions that will allow us to be profitable.

Does anyone see the fatal flaw in this logic, or is it just me?

So, spend $65 Mn in hardware expansions, but deny the $350,000 in personnel expansions (maintenance and operations combined) that will keep the hardware running (and, incidentally, staff the hardware).

Don't mind that grinding noise, it's just 2 million years of constantly improving rational behavior sliding back into the swamp.

[LMNO]

Yay upper management!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh FFS.

This is exactly why the government should NEVER be run like a business.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Best part is, it takes a year for an experienced technician to get used to the plant.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Best part is, it takes a year for an experienced technician to get used to the plant.

Oh yeah. This'll be great.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Best part is, it takes a year for an experienced technician to get used to the plant.

Oh yeah. This'll be great.

Best part is, my company is fairly intelligent as far as massive corporations go.

Which is kind of like being the brainiest kid on the short bus, but there you have it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

E-cigs are essentially ridiculous.  I don't like them.  This is not to say I'm not going to USE them...Quite the contrary.  I haven't had nor wanted a real smoke since I switched over, and I feel fantastic.  However, it is still entirely too much like a glass pipe, without the added advantage of bursting into flames like Richard Pryor.  Which I could kind of use right now.

Of the 3 e-cigs I bought, the first one lost its wick due to initial over-use, and a big drag turned into a mouth full of glycol.  Bad.  But other than that, my habit is now $6.50/week instead of $8.50/DAY, and I don't smell like a full ashtray all the time.

It also has the added advantage of offending Mike, who feels that I am somehow cheating the smoking area rules by "smoking" in my office.  I was able to punk him out on the rules, though, as the rules say that no tobacco will be smoked outside of smoking areas.  Says nothing about nicotene suspended in water.  Then I told him HE was in violation by being a big fat bastard-ugly cube monkey on company time.  I pointed out where the rules say that we cannot engage in "offensive behavior" while on the job, and that his 12 sammich-eating gut offends me.  He stormed out of my office to talk to Jim, forgetting that Jim is in Houston.

It's little moments like these that make me love my job, even when I've only had two hours of sleep.

[Faust]

From the last couple of months I'm surprised that Mike would go anywhere near Jims office.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

From the last couple of months I'm surprised that Mike would go anywhere near Jims office.

Mike is a slow learner.

There's a reason he was banished here from the parent plant.  He was even dumb enough to believe it was a promotion.

[Faust]

From the last couple of months I'm surprised that Mike would go anywhere near Jims office.

Mike is a slow learner.

There's a reason he was banished here from the parent plant.  He was even dumb enough to believe it was a promotion.

That makes a lot of sense. Sill, isn't there some kind of oil rig or Antarctic Ice breaker he could be stationed to, surely there must be somewhere worse to send him?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

From the last couple of months I'm surprised that Mike would go anywhere near Jims office.

Mike is a slow learner.

There's a reason he was banished here from the parent plant.  He was even dumb enough to believe it was a promotion.

That makes a lot of sense. Sill, isn't there some kind of oil rig or Antarctic Ice breaker he could be stationed to, surely there must be somewhere worse to send him?

Sadly, no.  This is the end of the line.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So, somewhere along the line, I more or less forgot about TKN's existence.  I noticed him this morning, behind a giant stack of manuals.  I asked him what he's been up to, and he said "Well, I finished everything you gave me, so I just went ahead and started documenting all that spaghetti code from Mitsubishi." (There's hundreds of pages of this stuff, all undocumented)



"How much have you completed?"

"About 80% of it.  Um, is that fast enough?"



"You're doing just fine, kid.  You just keep doing what you're doing."