Consider Phlebas

Actually, Don't

Instead, consider Baku.  Not a city normally on everyone's lips, this is the capital of Azerbaijan, an ex-Soviet state that is now flush with oil money from their native petroleum industry.  There was a football thing there a few years ago, which Conrad cares nothing about and isn't going to bother digging up.  Art!

     That's an illo of how the Azeris have bigged-up Baku with their oil money, not at all throwing shade at the Ruffians who can't touch this.

    ANYWAY I have another tale of both Malicious Compliance and Pro-Revenge to relate, founded firmly in Azerbaijan yet which will resonate as if it were in deepest darkest South Canada.  Art!

      You, the gentle reader, can see that there are geographical routes across ground to north, south and west, and east across the Caspian Sea.  These routes cross international borders.  If you're a logistics business then you need to deal with across these dimensions and borders, and in a timely fashion.  

     ENTER Ancient Coding Expert, hereafter ACE.  He was part of the Azeri Logistics Organisation at the very beginning, when it was him, the owner and a couple of truckers in a warehouse in Baku.  ACE brought with him his very own source code, which he cannily licenced to the company, permitting stuff like tracking, customs, dispatching and inventory, all the boring vital stuff a loggy company needs.  Buried deep in the licence contract was a clause that stated if they fired ACE, they'd have to stop using the software.

     You can probably guess where this is going.  Art!

     Over time, ALO thrived and grew, becoming a fixture in Baku, all the while running on ACE's software, a process that went on for years and years.  And years.  Did I mention years?

     Then the investors turned up, and with them came Management Professionals, including the villain of the piece, Snotty Condescending Unpleasant Manager, hereafter SCUM.  She was in charge of Operations, and  had all the tact and subtlety of a flying mallet.  She had a chip on her shoulder the size of Flame Tower about ACE, because he was <shudders in horror> OLD!  Art?

Flame Tower

     She described ACE as one of the company's 'lazy old people stuck in their ways' and always used the word 'legacy' to describe him.  She changed the dress code, clocking in and went after sick leave with a passion.  To get sick leave, you needed to inform her three days in advance.  The thing is, if you get sick, you don't get three days advance notice about it.

     ACE got sick.  You can tell this is an ex-Soviet nation because he described his minor heart attack as being like 'A Lada parked on my ribs'.  He took a couple of weeks off work, for which SCUM promptly fired him, despite his doctor's note.

     Bear in mind that the owner had hired SCUM, retained her and didn't interfere in her dictatorial management of the business, which means they were either stupid or incompetent or both.  Art!

You knew this was coming

     SCUM couriered a letter of termination to ACE, and if she'd been a man, would have tweaked the ends of her moustache.  ACE had previously mentioned labour laws yet didn't bother going to consult any legal authority, probably because they knew what was going to happen.

     Also, not only had SCUM fired the owner of the source code the company was based on, she'd also instructed the business to stop paying the monthly software  maintenance fee on the grounds that that company already owned it, a preposition that was fundamentally unsound.  Stupid, in plain Azeri.    Art!

'Stupid, in plain Azeri'

     ACE fielded calls from SCUM, who shrieked loud and long about being blackmailed but who had no legal recourse, and the owner, who didn't seem to know what was going on.  ACE then terminated his software licence.

     The chaos started next morning.  Remember that map of Azerbaijan?  Well, you need customs forms to export across borders.  ALO couldn't print any forms.  Their accountants couldn't create invoices. Dispatchers couldn't dispatch.  SCUM almost had a rage-induced stroke, and tried to bully ACE via e-mail, threatening legal action.  He politely replied that he was merely executing the terms of his contract - which SCUM hadn't bothered to read.  Oooops.

     The bottom line immediately suffered.  This made investors panic and look into what was going on.  At an emergency meeting SCUM suggested hiring developers to create new software, which would have taken months to manage, all the while the business would be bleeding money.  

      ALO tried to bring in another software company to unlock the code, who took a look at the software and promptly refused, for fear of getting sued.  Clients started to leave the business, always a bad sign.  At another emergency meeting SCUM was asked who fired the person who created the system everything was based on, and when she didn't come up with a convincing reason, she was fired.  Clients continued to leave until eventually ALO closed down for good.

     Meanwhile ACE had created a new logistics software platform, paired up with some ex-colleagues and started his own business, which is booming.

     I wonder what SCUM is putting on her CV - "I successfully tanked a long-established business by being a complete beeyatch".  

Failure To Launch

Another failure from the 'Museum Of Failure' and another miserably unsuccessful product that I'd never heard of.  Partly because it's Austrian and partly because it tanked over seven years ago.  Art!

     Another case of re-inventing the wheel, this one being an automatic toothbrush that one placed in the mouth to have it's motorised action clean your pegs.  They retailed for €129 each, and the Amabrush company raised €7 million from people willing to stick electrical devices in their mouth, which means they shifted over 50,000 units.  There was one teensy little technical problem.

     They didn't work. Here's one unhappy punter.

Terrible product do not buy,

There is no cleaning effect, every kickstarter backer that has received it complains it doesn't work.

The company ignore these complaints or sweep them aside as misunderstanding the product.

Don't waste your time or money go buy a decent toothbrush instead.

     R.I.P. Amabrush, deceased 2019.     

Smoking Iranian Woman

     You can tell that this wicked Jezebel is a scarlet hussy thanks to not wearing a hijab to cover her locks.  Not only that, it's not the done thing for females to smoke in public in Iran, so this is a double whammy of insolent insouciance.  Making it a triple whammy is the photograph of Clerical Grinch she's lit up with.  I doubt sympathetic magic exists but matey is probably feeling increasingly hot and bothered as the revolution keeps going and going.  This is one of the consequences of allowing your population to suffer from extensive and worsening drought, whilst you spend boatloads of cash refining uranium for nuclear weapons.

More Gentle Shoeing

Well, I try to be gentle but my feet are size 11 so it may be less than gentle in actuality.  Art!

     I can maintain the fiction that this isn't Politics, rather a form of prognostication as it involves future events.

     Nor do I merely accept that this will happen; the supposed 'Red Wave' mid-terms turned out to be a faint pink ripple instead.  If the Wizard Lizard Gizzard party becomes a minority, things look bleak for the Senile Sepia Sackbut, who may well get impeached - for a record third time.  Moscow Mike Johnson, current Speaker, might lose his job.  Tee hee!

More Fairy Tales

Dearie me, there are an awful lot of Darwin Award winners lurking out there.  As the Special Idiotic Operation grinds on in Ukraine, what but every village idiot across the globe thinks they can join up with the orcses and earn a fortune sitting safely behind the lines. 

     Except not.  Art!

     An orc lying!  I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.  Well, not very shocked.

Finally -

Another Biercism to end with.  

"Fiddle,n: An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat."