More Of Merry Manglement!

 Today's Torrid Tale Of Trauma

Hails from This Sceptred Isle, as proof that we Brits can be just as greedy and incompetent as the Septics*.  Once again the teller of this tale didn't include their company's name, nor even their location.  We can guess that it was in one of the bucolic shires as there is no mention of London or the Tube or horrendous traffic, and they make a point of informing that the cost of living was low, which it certainly isn't in The Modern Babylon.  Art!

     This frankly disturbing image is the AI Art Generator's idea of 'foot in mouth'.  Conrad is unsure if it would allow the foot to display a gunshot wound, because it would need to in order to reflect the stupidity of the manglement in this case.

     So, the Doughty Yet Accepting Narrator, hereafter DYAN, was one of the technical staff at this company, which offered technical support for other businesses, and which paid just enough to be worth working at.  They were one of 26 other technical staff, working alongside the sales team, HR and three directors.  The conditions never improved over the span of 5 years, which is another way of saying their pay was gradually falling behind inflation.  Still, the directors made bank and had lots of company shares, so it was all good, right?

     Apart from their selling off part of the company plot to a property developer, meaning the car park shrank dramatically, so much so that only management were allowed to park there.  Technical minions like DYAN had to pay to use the local council's car park.  Another unwanted expense.

     The fun began when one director was headhunted by a business in the nearest big city, which led the other two to decide on a restructure, which was designed to cut the pay of anyone not a manager and use this to boost the pay of everyone who was a manager.  DYAN personally stood to lose £5,000 per annum; his team leader stood to gain £13,000 per annum.  

     It wasn't as if this information was made public, though it was supposed to be according to law.  Instead, the directors hid the approved restructure proposals on their intranet in a file folder under a fake name, to satisfy the letter of the law.  One of the senior staff, who must have smelled a rat if not two, still dug the information out.  If this were South Canada, then manglement would be falling over themselves to declare it illegal to compare wages, which is in itself illegal.

     Surprise! the technical staff were not happy nor amused, and many of them had lots of experience in their field and knew what they were worth.  That weekend they all got together at the house of a Senior Engineer, who was throwing a barbecue as a kind of smoke-screen.  Art!

     They conspired.  They plotted.  They all wrote letters of resignation that weekend and handed them in on Monday morning, all 26 of them.

     This is where the malicious compliance part comes in, because yes! there is MalCom in this sorry story, too.  The 26 technical staff all quoted from their contract about 'gardening leave' being imposed for anyone with sensitive information about or access to the company's systems and procedures, effective immediately.  For those not in the blessed kingdom of Blighty, GL is where you get sent home to wait out your end of contract, presumably to spend time weeding and tickling up the flower beds.

     Thus it was at 09:30 the company's entire technical staff were gone.  The effects were instant and drastic.  What DYAN called the 'Unsolved Open' queue, meaning tickets raised for problems that hadn't been solved, jumped from 35 to over 100.  This, lest ye be unaware, is not good.  Art!

     Gosh! What happened on the day after their gardening leave ran out?  Why the Senior Engineer welcomed 26 staff to his new organisation, which promptly set about poaching customers from the old organisation.

     Which did not fare well, if the truth be told. It couldn't replace the lost staff and their expertise, nor could they afford to hire equally-skilled or experienced replacements.  They lost money on every contract serviced and after a year went bust, with the directors filing personal bankruptcy, whilst DYAN got a pay rise at their new job.  Go on, directors, keep telling yourself that greed is good.  Ha! <also points>.

Back To Carl The Complainer

Yes, our pithy Teuton corporal is still writing in his journal, and, as ever, is cross about the war, the enemy and especially his own officers.

15 September 1944

Had a set to with the Officer Commanding.  He takes the bicycles away from my section because he thinks we may retreat.  'Position will be held to the last man' he shouts at me.  The badly-mauled 3rd Battalion is in our sector as reinforcements.  Americans cross the border of the Reich!

Conrad's Commentary: senior Teuton officers were, by this point in the Second Unpleasantness, very fond of giving orders about fighting to the last bullet and the last man, then running away themselves.  That line about Americans being across the German border must have hit hard, because after all the years of fighting on other people's soil, the war has come home to the Teutons themselves.

Pointing And Laughing

Conrad has been uncharacteristically verrrrry reticent about recent news involving the Orange Land Whale and Kaptain Ketamine, mostly because it's being done to death by other people in the <shudders> Mainstream Media.  I hate using that term, it makes me sound like one of the loonwaffles.  Perhaps not capitalise.  Art?

     Not looking too sprightly, is it?  Bear in mind that this is being typed early in the afternoon, before the South Canadian markets update, so it may improve.  Or it may get even worse.  Interestingly enough, Kaptain Ketamine is now on record complaining about tariffs, stating that he wants free movement of trade across borders and between South Canada and This Sceptred Isle and Europe.  How his tune has changed now that his wallet is being affected!  One wonders how the Orange Land Whale will interpret this treachery, as DJTango insists on total, absolute unswerving loyalty or else (though he's instantly able to throw everyone else under the bus).

And, Further To That

Conrad doesn't usually have much time for Andrew Neil, yet this Youtube interview sounds like it might be amusing and diverting.  I did question about putting the thumbnail up as it contains potentially NSFW words.  Which are bad. Just so we're clear.  Art!

     One can expect Fatty to go into a ferocious sulk if he ever gets to hear about all the mean things that Scottish man is saying about him, and then sue for a hundred billion trillion dollars.  Which would only underline and prove Mister Neil's vile and scurrilous assertion.

Look At These Figures

Conrad is unsure exactly what 'Minecraft' is, apart from possibly being one of those Thieves Of Time, a computer game?  Warner Bros, the film studio, saw potential in this brand and made a film starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa.  Art!

     I suppose we need a picture to hang this item upon.  Art!

     Those are outstanding figures, meaning it's already recouped it's $150 million budget and it's only been out for 3 days.  This also makes 'Snow White' look quite pale and sickly by comparison, which has only garnered $168 million total in two and a half weeks, and which is probably rendered dead at the box office by this competition.

    Ooops!  <laughs and points, which Conrad has been doing quite a bit of late>

     One hopes that Jack and Jase got a percentage of the box office, then Jack won't keep having to do awful unfunny comedies any longer.

*  Rhyming slang - 'Septic Tank' = 'Yank'