Forgive My Punnery, It Will All Make Sense In The End
Or it won't. Who cares anyway, it's not as if you have to pay to read this scrivel. So! we are going to be trawling the depths of manglement and ineptitude in today's Intro, a lovely combination that we enjoy typing about as much as you enjoy reading them. Art!
???
Ah, I think I follow Art's logic here. This is from 'UFO', where SHADO plots to install a remote camera probe on a moon of the predatory aliens' home planet, beaming back detailed scientific data. All the better to defeat your interstellar foe. If I recall despite gin and old age, they were using microscope-level close-ups of Lieutenant Ellis' thigh, which at 10,000x magnification had the same level of detail as a planet.
ANYWAY now that we've got the clickbait out of the way, let us now march swiftly on to this Intro's tepid tautological transcript. Art!
You see, this tale is told by Remote Installation Technical Expediter, hereafter RITE, whose stated job was as an installer at a 'remote office'. Given the context, I think this was in the Pacific North-West of South Canada, possibly working out of a city like Portland. Their job was specialised, technical, time-consuming and expensive, requiring them to travel to many company locations in order to install, maintain or repair equipment. RITE was careful not to identify either their company or even business model, because litigation! RITE had to travel a lot for the job, even spending weekends at work locations. Art!
Before Dimwit Efficiency Exclusion-Day, hereafter DEE-Day, RITE had been afforded overtime and Time Off In Lieu. Once DEE-Day arrived, he got a new manager, who was
Since, typically, South Canadian managers don't realise that slavery has long ended, WRONG expected RITE to travel from Sunday to Friday, with no overtime or Time Off In Lieu. When he went to HR - sorry for all this upper case - they told him that he was salaried. Salaried! Which meant manglement could tell him to work 100 hours per week for the same salary as a 40 hour week.
RITE thought they were wrong. In fact he must have known they were wrong, as his next move was to contact that organisation which manglement hates and fears: the State Labour Board. Art!
This is the organisation that monitors employers and their adherence to the law, and if they say it's being broken, then 1) It's being broken and 2) There will be fiscal fallout.
They told RITE to hire a lawyer, as the law was indeed being broken.
They told his employer that if this pay issue wasn't resolved immediately they would be fined $1 for every $2 they owed RITE.
Panic ensued. The case rolled forward, until the business agreed to settle out of court, for fear of being hit with a six-figure total. Art!
RITE settled for $40,000 and his legal expenses paid. This part made Conrad sit up and pay attention, as typically in cases like this we NEVER get to hear what the dollar amount is.
He then abruptly quit, having negotiated himself a generous severance package. Quitting meant having an exit interview with WRONG, who had to sit there and be lambasted at how poor a manager she was. O dearie me.
There was a coda to this. With nobody in the possibly-Portland office, there was nobody to do RITE's next eight outstanding installs. WRONG thus had to hire in the businesses East Coast staff, flying them in across the continent and paying overtime, which must have stung, and hotel accommodation too if it were overnight, which by RITE's work patterns it definitely was. That's at least $1,000 for a return ticket per person and who knows how much on Ubers and hotels. WRONG must have ended up with a big hole in her budget. O dearie me.
NB another reason the business settled out of court is that this prevented a legal precedent from being set, so anyone else on a salary who challenged their pay would need to mount a separate court case.
After The Flood
Of mint tea, that is. The one that ruined my handwritten notes on the film 'Greenland', or so I thought. Art!
By squinting a tad and holding up the wet sheet to the light, I made out nearly everything, even if it took a while. What you see to starboard is the re-written sheet, and yes it is safely stored above ground, beyond the reach of carelessly dropped hot or cold drinks.
That does still leave an impressively large stack of books, papers, comic books, other hand-written notes, and my Notebook, which I have just retrieved. Were that to get soaked the Remote Nuclear Detonator would get a hammering.
Your Top-Secret Organisation Is Showing
Yes, more yarking on about 'UFO' and if you're not quiet I'll do a robust analysis of the whole organisation IN THE COMIC as well as the television program. That could take 1,500 words on it's own. For reasons we shall see. Art!
This is more a continuity check than pointing out plot holes. For the first strip in 'Countdown' and never again, they include a few film stills, as above.
Also, note the alien firing a ray gun, rather than the much more prosaic machine guns from the television program. Trying to do energy-beam effects on a television production was much more expensive in 1970 than merely firing bullets. Art!
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| Apologies for the crease hiding art |
Here's the justification for this item's title. Here are two SHADO Mobiles blasting the living heck out of a quite British street, and one of them demolishing a barricade of police cars, whilst the police - armed but perhaps a specialist firearms unit - let fly to no effect.
WHAT PART OF THIS IS SECRET!
That is all. Your hair-splitting pedant has made his point.
Your Helping For Today Of Schadenfreude
Don't forget, no matter how sweet the taste, schadenfreude has no calorific value, does not cause male pattern baldness and will successfully past any Customs check. These are the bitingly citric Comments on a ballfoot game between two teams, whom I cannot be bothered to remember or check on.
WebbTheRed
18:27 17 Aug
1) The stadium
2) The owners
3) The manager
4) The players
5) The fans
Replace all of those at the same time and there is half a chance they could avoid relegation this year
Ooooh, snarky!
Incidentally, that title 'WebbTheRed' is evidence of someone really not liking ManUtd. Harry Webb was a referee, and all the people who hate hate hate ManUtd - and there are a lot of them! - insisted that he was horribly biased in favour of ManUtd. A conspiracy theory with no basis in fact. Art!
Harry, easily the most disliked man on the pitch. By both sides.
The Algorithm Is Conspiring
Conrad has noticed a plethora of similar items coming up in his news feed, which is either wild coincidence, or they have a variety of insight into what I post about on Blogger. Art!
I had to trim that last one to get it in accordance with the size of the others. Thank the lord aloft for Snip, it really is a most useful tool! The snooping algorithm? Rather less so.
With that we are done!
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