Or, The Perils Of Having An Idiot In Charge
Buckle in, this is a long one. Firstly, let me explain what a 'Freight Brokerage Company' is. They are a licensed intermediary, allowing shippers who have goods to be moved, to interact with carriers, who have the trucks that move said goods. This is a lot more complex than it sounds, as we'll get into. We shall call the business involved Moving ENhancer, MEN from now on. The tale is told by Solo Integrated Systems Technical Admin, hereafter SISTA, even though he's a man. I can be fickle that way. Art!
I'm having to use a Google image because the AI Art Generator absolutely refuses to work with 'Logistics brokerage company'. So, MEN had about 200 staff and handled about four hundred loads per day, including shipments into Canada and Mexico. They arranged pickups, kept track of shipments, did customs paperwork for cross-border shipping, invoicing and carrier payments. SISTA had been with MEN for seven years at the start of this tale. Art!
When he started, the only server the company had was in a coat closet that doubled as a break-room and Wifi stopped working if the office microwave was turned on. With a bit of humblebrag he detailed the changes and introductions he made: building a proper air-conditioned server room; installed network infrastructure; got a new Transport Management System which controlled dispatch, load tracking, carrier management and with customer-facing portals; integrated the TMS with accounting; facilitated Electronic Data Integration, fancy-speak for computers talking to other computers; getting GPS; implementing a new phone system; installing security cameras and putting in a security card system. SISTA knew his onions, garlic, shallots and leeks, to put it mildly. He originally reported to the Vice President of Operations, whom bluntly admitted he knew nil about computer technology but who recognised competence personified. Art!
Hmmmm. I asked for 'Confidence Personified'.
SISTA made a point of telling management that he needed at least one or preferably two IT understudies, and explicitly mentioned the Bus Factor. Art!
He was always turned down on the grounds of cost, or 'next year'.
ANYWAY suddenly a crony of the CEO turned up and was appointed 'Chief Technical Officer', which is odd as freight brokerage companies don't typically have any such position. However - that word again! - he'd just become unemployed when the start-up he was working at tanked hard. We never find out the reason it tanked but Conrad is 95% sure it was do to with him. I shall dub him 'Complete Twod Of Off-putting Liability', hereafter CTOOL. His background was in sales and he had zero knowledge of or experience with IT, but he could throw around buzz-words as if he knew what he was talking about and hadn't just Googled them. Art!
As an example, he wanted everything migrated to the cloud within six months. SISTA patiently pointed out that doing so would take a team of at least three people eighteen months, that the TMS had no ability to integrate with the cloud and that the EDI kit was aging and had to be physically present on-site, all of which CTOOL branded as 'insubordination', because once again he had no idea what SISTA was talking about.
You can tell this is going to end badly.
CTOOL then cut the IT maintenance budget by 40%, again being warned by SISTA that various bits of kit were aging and needed to be replaced. CTOOL used the money instead to hire business cronies to pimp their wares, a major conflict of interest in case you're unsure. SISTA documented all their interactions, printing off e-mails and threads as evidence. Art!
Then came the Christmas holiday furore. SISTA had booked two weeks off, buying tickets to travel out of state to his parents over Christmas, and all had been approved by the VP of Operations long before CTOOL showed up.
Surprise! CTOOL told him the holiday was cancelled as he needed SISTA on-site to - something something something. He outright said 'This is a loyalty test' and was power-tripping hard at this point, giving SISTA the option of cancelling the holiday or being fired.
SISTA insisted that he had to be given two week's notice, at which CTOOL fired him, throwing a $5 bill as severance, and scribbling down on paper that he'd just fired SISTA.
One can only wonder at the idiocy of CTOOL at this point. He had absolutely no idea what SISTA's job involved and had now fired the man who built the system, with no transition or backup.
Ooopa.
Right, rather than have this become the whole of BOOJUM! for Monday, I shall end it here. We will deffo get back to this as things begin to hot up.
Another WOE Moment
It stands for 'What on Earth?' because we are SFW here and won't use the vulgar alternative. Art!
WHY AM I SEEING THIS?! I do not run a business and thus have no need for lessening the time I spend doing billing, because I currently spend ZERO time doing billing. The algorithm here is going potty.
With Undignified Haste
You will doubtless have heard about Prez Zed's epic trolling of Putinpot, sending an official document permitting Peter The Average to have his May 9th Victory Charade - beg pardon, Parade - thanks to the generosity of Ukraine. Art!
I bet that had the Puffy-Phaced Petrol Pimp chewing the carpet in rage. The parade didn't feature any tanks or other heavy equipment, partly because they haven't got any left, and because what's left is needed in Ukraine. The whole thing was over in 45 minutes, half the usual time, and nobody important turned up for it. That's not what I want to concentrate on. Art!
Devoid of makeup and flattering lighting, this is what Botox Boris looks like now - more lke 83 than 73. Stress, one imagines. The 3-day SMO has been going on for more than 1,500 days, longer, as satirists like to point out, than the Great Patriotic War. Which took the Red Army (40% Ukrainian) from the outskirts of Moscow to the heart of Berlin.
The Kozaky's ability to hit central Moscow is another cause for Dimya to feel stressed, as it is the result of strategic decisions make in Ukraine two or three years ago: to go in for drone warfare on an industrial scale. In early 2024 the Ukrainians only made 110 long-range strikes, and were curtailed by Western powers who had supplied missiles. In March this year they launched 7,300 long range strikes, an average of 243 EVERY NIGHT. These kind of numbers saturate Ruffian air defences and have been hitting targets further and further inside Ruffia. Perm, where a vital pipeline hub is located, is 960 miles from the Ukrainian border, and it's been hit twice in a row. Art!
Keep watching the skies, matey
I just found another photo of him looking utterly miserable. Art!
Miserable, haggard and old. I wonder what he's thinking?
Steve, Our Man In Moscow
Rosenberg, that is, the BBC correspondent who works in an environment that must feel extremely threatening. I doubt the FSB would dare pick on a representative of the BBC, unless the order came direct from the lips of Bunker Grandad, yet we of GREAT BRITAIN live rent-free in the dictator's head, as well as his minions and when another factory gets malleted by Storm Shadows, Putinpot's mind might crack.
ANYWAY AGAIN I noticed an oddity in one of his transcripts of the Ruffian print media. Art!
Steve has translated it as 'Trump' but the literal translation is 'Tramp'. I would expect them to use the Cyrillic 'Y' for the 'U' equivalent in English.
Or perhaps they are making a value judgement?
A Little Gentle Shoeing
Apparently the Iranians have been making satirical Lego videos of Donald Judas Trump, which must shrivel his soul as 1) He has no sense of humour and 2) They hurt his fee-fees. So his White House staff decided to come back with a meme of their own. Art!
I have never played Uno but Larry is right: the goal in Uno is to get rid of all your cards. Donold loses again.
No comments:
Post a Comment