Yes, We Are Back On That Subject Again
For Conrad, this never gets old, seeing idiots in positions of responsibility making utter fools of themselves for their colleagues, the business and indeed the entire world to see. O delicious schadenfreude.
One thing I have noticed is that these tales are usually South Canadian in origin, because here in the Allotment of Eden, and on the Continent, too, we have laws and rules and precedence and unions with teeth. Art!
Hmmmm. how odd. AI Art Generator jibbed at 'Trade union with teeth' but was perfectly happy about 'Trade union with great big fangs', which is yet more proof that AI will never conquer the world.
ANYWAY by wild coincidence, an item came up on my news sidebar with an especially relevant title. Art!
This DOES NOT SHOW THE WOMAN IN QUESTION you slobbering perverts, and is in fact a verrrrry long and detailed explanation about how to conduct yourself if such a situation occurs. There are dozens of pages and pictures, so I shall have to summarise a tad. Their advice amounts to:
1) Protect yourself by documenting the boss's communications exactly, especially with timestamps.
2) Keep receipts where relevant, as in having a meal together, hotel bookings or airplane tickets.
3) Cherish all e-mails, texts and What'sApp comms, because these are persistent evidence of Boss being inappropriate. Forward to your own personal e-mail account to prevent deletion after the fact.
4) Check your contract and request clarification from HR about your contract and what constitutes over-stepping boundaries between official and personal.
5) Document closely any retaliation from Boss if - or more likely, when! - the 'request' is denied, such as being excluded from projects or getting negative performance reviews.
6) Preserve accurate, dated information about any legal advice you have been given. Art!
That's all the serious pre-amble out of the way. We will come back to this at the end of the Intro. Now to the hilariously amusing part of the story <it says here>.
So, this tale concerns Hostile Aggressive Leader, hereafter HAL, who loathed and detested our narrator, Inoffensive Business Minion, hereafter IBM, for no clearly defined reason. Some people are just bottomholes, I guess. She did not have the authority to fire him, which probably scorched her soul black in the quiet hours of the night, so came up with an 'alternative strategy', spelled 'stupid'. Art!
The happy couple
She would hire her boyfriend into a different position, and then bully IBM into leaving, so boyfriend could switch roles into the now absent position.
There were a few teeny tiny problems with this - ah - 'strategy'. One of them was that IBM was no pushover and had a touch of vanadium steel in their spine. In fact he and the boyfriend got along splendidly, so much so that they became friends, which was useful for the inside information that got divulged. Art!
Another problem is that the happy couple broke up after a month, their relationship melting like butter in the oven*, after which HAL promptly fired her boyfriend. This was a bottomhole move, and very unwise, because who did boyfriend spill the beans to? Why of course his friend IBM as he left with his cardboard box of desk impedimenta.
IBM, knowing a thing or two about employment law, recommended that boyfriend - I really should have come up with a name for him, shouldn't I? - go to HR and tell them what had prevailed.
He did. Ooops. Art!
HR, aware that they had to scuttle a potential sexual harassment claim - IBM added that 'have carnal relations with me and I'll give you a job' might well be one of the definitions of sexual harassment - investigated and fired HAL. Who thereafter blamed IBM for her getting let go. Some people are just bottomholes, I guess.
I did mention coming back to the early part of the Intro. Art!
This came up on the same page as 'My Boss Told Me -' and was too much serendipity to waste.
'Nestle has fired its chief executive after just one year in the job because he failed to disclose a "romantic relationship" with a "direct subordinate".
There is just so much potential for unbalanced power dynamics to cause abuse that Nestlé really had no choice here. Besides which, I bet it broke contractual rules and procedures. Interestingly enough, the affair seems to have been uncovered by a report on their business whistle-blower line, which doubtless remains permanently anonymous, so we'll never know who dobbed him in. On the other hand, if the direct subordinate followed Steps 1 - 6 above - hmmm. Food for thought. Ha! Nestlé - food for thought - do you see wh - O you do.
"The War Illustrated Edition 213 17th August 1945"
Yes, we are on to a new Edition, and this one chimes with my birthday, O happy coincidence. Art!
You ought to recognise Winnie to starboard; the chap to port is the South Canadian President, Harry Truman, who took over when Roosevelt jitterbugged his way off this mortal coil. Harry was there for the 'Big Three' conference at Potsdam with the presence of Sinister Tsar Josef Stalin, who notably refused to ever travel overseas, as he suspected the oceans might try to drown him.
That lady in uniform to starboard in the background is Winnie's daughter, Mary, in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, which was the women's arm of the British Army. Just so you know.
Here's One I Can Get Behind
Over on Twitter, 'Beefeater', who tends to post quite intellectual assessments that are quite beyond Conrad's 'Ruffia bad!' level, put up a graph showing the price of beer in Mordorvia. It's not looking good. Art!
That's the price of a litre of beer in rubles: 196. This echoes the real inflation rate in Ruffia, instead of the fictional government one. Note, too, that this is reporting from 'Rosstat', the Federal State Statistics Service, not the CIA or CAMRA. It's a bit of a poisoned chalice, being head of Rosstat; the previous one was sacked and sent off to be a regional governor, presumably because he wasn't lying and massaging figures the way Bunker Grandad wanted.
So, drowning your sorrows in Ruffia means having to take out a bank loan before you can visit the pub. O dearie me.
More Of Rails
Back to the pictures that Oliver has put up of the British involvement in rail logistics in North Africa.
Engines of the Western Allies in WW2
Art!
Here we see a couple of A13 Cruiser tanks, loaded onto flatcars - stop me if I get too technical - for transport along the Western Desert Extension Line. You can see the hilariously outdated solar topees being worn at the time, so this is early in the Desert War, before they were abandoned as being stupid and of little to no utility.
Why transport a clutch of tanks on flatcars? Because it saves wear and tear on the tracks, suspension and engine, not to mention petrol, as tanks are some of the thirstiest beasts extant. Travel over either the coast road or inland would result in at least some tanks breaking down, so why risk it when you have a convenient railway to hand?
Hail To The King, Baby!
One of the Youtube channels that I find endlessly entertaining is Kyle's 'Geography King' channel, which looks at different aspects of South Canadian geography. I've just watched one where he describes a couple of location types that are unpleasant to live in. Which we may come back to, I made detailed notes. Art!
I know what you're thinking - how can a chap have SEVEN atlases when surely a single one would suffice?
Rather more interesting is that plaque on the back wall. Art!
This is the sigil of Kronus, I believe, and more pertinently has been a marque used by Blue Öyster Cult since the Seventies. Hmmm. Is Kyle trying to tell us something? Enquiring minds want to know.
Okay, Vulnavia, we are now DONE!
* I made this up myself, can you tell?
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