We've Been Absent From This Theme For A While
So I'm going to return to it, with apologies for those who were looking forward to more architectural follies at Painhill Park. Maybe tomorrow.
This tale has manglement stupidity in spades, plus very dubious hiring practices and rampant stupidity in spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds.
First, let us introduce the Put-Upon MAnager narrating the tale, PUMA hereafter. They worked - you may be ahead of me here - as a manager in a very large software firm. Art!
The Board of Directors proved to have feet of clay, and brains made of it, too, for they appointed a new Vice President of Development, hereafter VIPRE, whom had little to no understanding of how a software business operated. Instead, he was brimming with bright ideas - well, actually one idea singular - of how to transform things.
He introduced The System and yes, that was the official name for it. He replaced what he called the 'assembly line' or in other words the actual software engineers and developers, with a baroque management monstrosity. Art!
In future, the engineers and developers would have nil ability to make decisions. Instead, there would be a core of 'Decision Facilitators' who would route decisions to the correct department to make a decision. No word from VIPRE on how this would either increase efficiency or reduce the bottom line, and from Conrad's cynical assessment, things would have gotten much more expensive with all those middle-management salaries to pay.
This so far is all window-dressing, for the real issue came when the business had to emergency hire a whole new tranche of managers to enable The System to operate. Enter Pat, or Persistently Absent Thought. Art!
PAT had run a corner store for 27 years and knew nothing about software, IT or management in general, so I can only presume that she was hired thanks to her clothing choices - PUMA puts it as "Her wardrobe did not have a single item that would fall under a conventional definition of business-appropriate attire". She was also as thick as ready-mixed concrete, and here PUMA introduced the acronym 'ELI5' or 'Explain Like I'm 5', which gifts PAT a year or two. If anything new came up she would freeze like a deer in the headlights, slack jawed as a zombie, although probably not drooling quite as much. Art!
Note lack of drool
Then PAT got the only non-white person on her team fired, due to what she claimed was 'constant staring', which amounted to him emerging from the restrooms at the same time as her. That was it. She went a-weeping and a-wailing to HR threatening to sue everyone for everything, and he was walked out of the building by security. Perhaps, PAT, wear more than a swimsuit and wrap to work?
PUMA was deeply unhappy at this behaviour and outcome, because it tanked his annual bonus STRIKE ONE. It also meant endless, endless, HR meetings, reviews, e-mails, meetings, more e-mails and a whole additional slathering of un-necessary drama. STRIKE TWO. Art!
The firing of Mr Minority - one wonders at an HR department blindfold enough to fire a minority hire which has verrrry bad optics - meant a significant hole in PUMA's team capabilities, made worse for him as he had to baby PAT for at least an hour per day as she clucked and squawked in utter hopeless helplessness at doing anything. Art!
"The tyranny of The System"
Everything was made much, much worse by VIPRE's vapid venture, which PUMA broke down into a workstream: anything needing amending or changing or implementing had to go via Testing, then Integration, then Verification, and finally Deployment, all of which sounds like a pointlessly complicated way of slowing everything down and making it far more expensive.
All this sent PAT into a loop, where she would run panicked to PUMA and then her manager and be told to resolve things - which she was unable to do. So she stopped reading her e-mails. PUMA, after thoroughly documenting, documenting and documenting her behaviour and activity, decided he was done with her, and informed her boss of same. He got a zinger of a reply: "Don't bother me with this again, and don't ever go over PAT's head ever again."
Oooo-err Matron! someone has their gusset in a twist.
Don't forget that PUMA did all the documenting. This is how to cover's one's bottom in the corporate world. Art!
A dark setting for a grim meeting: The Project had utterly failed and management were looking for heads to chop off. PUMA was present as were PAT and her Zinger E-Mail Manager, whom looked like the cat that ate the cream, the canary and the dill-infused poached salmon.
If you recall, Document, Document and Document had been PUMA's default mode, meaning that they had chapter and verse on how they had detailed PAT's inability and outright refusal to do any work. To wit: 82 critical points of failure and another 166 major issues that had been assigned to PAT with NO ACTION for months, as well as 72 e-mails to her and ZEMM from PUMA about the consequences of ignoring - well, everything.
Ooops. Art!
PUMA passed round the e-mail ZEMM had sent about not bothering him, to ZEMM's unbridled horror, as it established why PAT was not doing anything: he had been covering for her.
She was fired. ZEMM was fired. VIPRE got demoted a few weeks later and the new VP Of Development instantly ditched The System and reinstituted normal work practices.
It doesn't quite end there. PAT was unemployed for 10 months before starting at a new company, which fired her mere days later as A Mysterious Someone had informed the business that she'd been fired already for being a complete dunce, and that she'd been a minor manager, not the high-flyer that had kind of appeared on her Linkedin page. Gosh I wonder who that could have been? Art!
Is it a cheetah? Is it a leopard? No, it's a -
More Ungentle Shoeing
There has been a concerted effort by Mopey Dick The Orange Land Whale in recent weeks to turn the 250th anniversary of the treacherous South Canadians spurning the mantle of British sovereignity into a big bash celebrating him. Sorry, that needs to he 'Him' as he always capitalizes himself.
Things have not gone well for the 'Fair' that was planned. Art!
There are considerably more people on stage than in the - ah - 'audience', whom total 7. Such miserable attendances have been par for the course so far, which King Piggy will ignore and pretend attendees number in the millions. Which he will have to take on trust as he can't count past 10 without taking his shoes and socks off. Art!
He's going to claim this unlovely picture shows his right eye 'winking' and not being swollen almost shut. Sweet dreams, Piggy, you may get as many as 14 people tomorrow!
More Blasting From The Pasting
Another still from the 'Cape Canaveral Space Museum' and I can attest that I know where the picture is located this time. Art!
Actually 'educated guess' is closer to the truth. What the artist has depicted is a missile wing of Minuteman ICBMs, which were first deployed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in late 1962. What you see here is presumably a breezy, balmy summer's day, as there's no snow or ice and the trees have all their leaves. Art!
What a real Minuteman ICBM silo looks like from an aerial vantage point.
DO NOT TRY MY PATIENCE!
I've already got an item from 'Factbytes' cued up and ready to roll, although to do them justice they don't seem to be indulging in any historical howlers just yet. Art!
For a start, these tanks rolling off the production line are South Canadian Shermans, NOT Teuton tanks. A minor point yet a telling one, I feel.
Secondly, the Teutons were most certainly able to attack again. Kursk took place in mid-1943, and the Teutons were noted for counter-attacking on a strategic scale in December 1944 in their Ardennes offensive, and again in Hungary in February 1945.
I'm watching you, 'HistoryAtWar', I'm watching you.
Finally -
Going out with a Biercism.
"Indiscretion,n: the guilt of a woman."
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