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ABSOLUTE CHAOS

Started by The Good Reverend Roger, April 11, 2017, 02:37:11 AM

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The Good Reverend Roger

Go in to work my first day today, my boss resigned (effective 2 weeks).  The plant engineer quit 3 months ago, and his office is haunted.  The plant manager quit 3 weeks ago in disgrace and nobody has done the regulatory shit.  The site manager is a nice old guy who smiles and wants me to tell him that everything is okay.  It's not.  But it will be.  As long as we fix the fucking parking lots before we get sinkholes.  The environmental engineer has a brand new degree and lead in the water, and came into my office and asked for my advice.  AN ENGINEER ASKED FOR ADVICE.  Of course I'm giving him advice,  this shit needs to be encouraged.  I *think* I see the problem, but we're going to collect data anyway.

The safety lady (also brand new) is an empire builder who was furious that I was taking security away from her.  NOPE.  TAKE IT, DON'T HAVE TIME FOR IT.  It runs itself and all that is required is making ID badges.  She was going to go to war over making ID badges.  The acting maintenance manager is a bigwig from the corporate home office who announced that I am to be considered management instead of a coordinator, then vanished back into his den.  The accountant and the purchasing agent are just happy to see someone come IN rather than go out.  The IT guy is awesome and helped me locate the listening device in my office, which is apparently a corporate standard.  We do all our serious talking over by the chillers, where you have to whisper at 100 decibels.

It's absolute chaos, because nobody wants to take control.  Well, the Captain has arrived.

Now I just have to talk my boss out of resigning, and talk corporate bigwig into letting her retract her resignation.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Wizard Joseph

It will be GLORIOUS! They haven't the slightest idea who they just brought aboard.

Question, does being seen as a manager come with management pay and benefits package? It ought to.

If there's been lead in the water for some time it's known to cause irritability and eventually psychosis. Anyone got bleeding gums?
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

Vanadium Gryllz

Why is everyone leaving?

"I was fine until my skin came off.  I'm never going to South Attelboro again."

LMNO

Odysseus has come home to Ithaca.

Sounds like you're in for a good time, for a specific definition of "good".

Eater of Clowns

 :lulz:

So did you apply for this job or did you just wander towards the unbroken shaft of light on the horizon that heralded your coming?
Quote from: Pippa Twiddleton on December 22, 2012, 01:06:36 AM
EoC, you are the bane of my existence.

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on March 07, 2014, 01:18:23 AM
EoC doesn't make creepy.

EoC makes creepy worse.

Quote
the afflicted persons get hold of and consume carrots even in socially quite unacceptable situations.

The Good Reverend Roger

UPDATE:  Boss is actually insane.  This morning's meeting was sort of like finding out that the pilot of the plane you are on is banging up big rails of cocaine off of the flight attendant's ass and oh, yeah, the landing gear is broken but we elected not to spend the money budgeted on it because doing so would not demonstrate the UNLIMITED POWAH of the person making the decisions.

Fortunately, I am not there to succeed.  I am there to chart failure in the potable and waste water systems (and let me tell you how much horrormirthy goodness is tied up in that.  But I helped the site manager lead a coup today anyway, so now we're just fixing shit and not telling the boss.

EXAMPLE:  she has forbidden the repair of a 10 acre parking lot, even though it's in the budget because "we don't just spend money just because it's budgeted".  The penalty for NOT fixing the parking lot is a series of giant fucking sinkholes that can exceed 15' deep and 30 or so feet wide, with no warning at all.

IN ADDITION, she has built this giant model of utility function, based on SCADA reporting.  It's absolutely flawless.  Except that she missed a gas meter for an entire 6 floor, 2 acre building, and 2 electric meters.  This was brought up in the morning meeting by the contract engineer, and we were then treated to TWO AND A HALF HOURS of her explaining why her world is constantly being sabotaged by maliciously stupid underlings and why is our turnover so fucking high, anyway?

For the second half of the day, she sat in her office in a sort of rage-zen trance that frankly left me feeling jealous.

Not that I care.  I'm here to study the shitpocalypse.  Which is not some nebulous possibility, but an absolute certainty, in bigger cities and smaller towns.  It's gonna happen, and I know why.  I just don't know yet how bad it's going to be.  Next week, the environmental engineer and I are going to do a scale simulation.  We think we can make shit go 40 feet up in the air without any mechanical assistance, using nothing but a normal sewer/sanitation system that is about 1/100 of 1% the size of, say, Manhattan's...Just by deliberately causing a single failure.

Don't you wish you were me?

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Cain

Are you regretting talking her out of resigning?

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Cain on April 12, 2017, 02:04:12 AM
Are you regretting talking her out of resigning?

I didn't get to that point.  I was going to talk to her after the meeting, but then decided it was best if I just shut the fuck up.   :lulz:
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Good Reverend Roger

Boss has been offered a rather monastic position elsewhere (Guatemala, I think) by the company, doing less stressful things.  I was handed the monthly energy reports and discovered why she's crazy.  She's a dataist.  I am, too, but what she failed to do was examine the sources of her data.  She was getting incorrect data from the SQL servers, because the gas valves were installed "wherever the fuck", rather than in the places for which they were calibrated, one wasn't reporting at all, the electricity meters haven't been calibrated in forever (but you can bet our supplier's meters are), and as a result, nothing could EVER be reconciled, because she was applying sound logic to bad data.

Also, she didn't bother inviting department heads in to discuss why their numbers shat on the floor.  Not that this is a criticism of the department heads (not if it's done with any diplomacy at all), but rather a chance to say, "HEY, SOMETHING OVER THERE IS SHITTING THE BED AND MAYBE WE SHOULD FIND WHERE THE 3,500,000 GALLONS OF WATER WENT."

So apparently corporate guy is reassessing my role in the complex.  I have told him that I will commit seppeku if he puts me in charge of stuff, and that I am far more valuable doing what I was hired to do, but give me more money please and don't stand too close when we set off the shit geyser, those clothes look expensive.

Safety manager lady says me and the environmental engineer are just a little too excited about said upcoming shitpocalypse, but I don't expect her to understand. It's a nerd thing.

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Vanadium Gryllz

Quote from: Captain Pike on April 13, 2017, 02:13:07 AM
... discovered why she's crazy.  She's a dataist. 

I had to give that a double-take.

Glad things are looking up for you Roger. Sounds like they're going to shit for everyone else but hey.
"I was fine until my skin came off.  I'm never going to South Attelboro again."

The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: Xaz on April 13, 2017, 10:27:38 AM
Quote from: Captain Pike on April 13, 2017, 02:13:07 AM
... discovered why she's crazy.  She's a dataist. 

I had to give that a double-take.

Glad things are looking up for you Roger. Sounds like they're going to shit for everyone else but hey.

Ahem
Quote"and don't stand too close when we set off the shit geyser" 

Additionally I at first thought it read "she's a dadaist" instead of dataist and had to double take.
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

LMNO

I swear, some of my most frustrating moments have been trying to figure out why the numbers don't add up before discovering that the numbers themselves are wrong, after being repeatedly told they're not.

It's also fun when someone asks you to do an apples to apples analysis, but provides a set of apples and a set of sea cucumbers.

Cain

Is this practice for joining the Trump administration?

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Cain on April 13, 2017, 07:35:18 PM
Is this practice for joining the Trump administration?

This is monetizing the Trump administration's mistakes.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: LMNO on April 13, 2017, 01:19:56 PM
I swear, some of my most frustrating moments have been trying to figure out why the numbers don't add up before discovering that the numbers themselves are wrong, after being repeatedly told they're not.

It's also fun when someone asks you to do an apples to apples analysis, but provides a set of apples and a set of sea cucumbers.

Yes.  Bad data + good logic = insanity.

On the other hand, today I asked the neighbor if I could borrow 300 gallons of ammonia, so...
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.