Queen Perfume - VI

Every now and then even the Queen can ask a question so amazingly stupid, that it sends me into a spiral of disbelief that she has a more senior position than I do and that she wins awards left and right for her contributions to the Shitshow.

Here’s her question, in laymans terms, that she sent to a Senior Fellow Engineer (as a note there are only a handful of Senior Fellow Engineers at the entire Shitshow and probably 2 or 3 in the entire region I work in):

"If a wheel falls of my car, and I don’t have a spare tire, the car’s traction control will still work with 3 wheels allowing me to continue driving, right?"

The wheels on the Shitshow go round and round, round and round, round and round. Because the wheels on the Shitshow go round and round, I throw rocks.

The Art of Cloning

A flunktional manager did something the other day that is a perfect example of how the network drives get clogged up with data (See the post Folders, Folder, Folders) But first, a little background...

A few months ago, I had gotten so frustrated with one of the bureaucratic processes that I decided to sit down and write a simple "How-To" guide for the other engineers. My flunktional manager had me place it in the "Process" folder in one of the network drives, the new official location of the document. The link got sent out to the rest of my team and it quickly became a quick reference guide for anyone having to deal with this painful bureaucratic process.

Before you knew it, word got around to the other teams that this handy guide existed. So last week, I get a rare visit from a flunktional manager from another group. He came by to ask about my reference guide because he wanted to send it out to his team. I told him it's in the "Process" folder on the network drive, and that I would email the link to him, which I did.

About an hour later, he sends an email to his team with a link to my "How-To" reference guide. The only problem is...it's a different link. Rather than forward my email, he actually went through the trouble of creating a new folder in a completely different location and saved a copy of my "How-To" guide in that folder. So now we have two identical documents in two separate folders. And for what? To confuse people? What if we need to update the document or it becomes obsolete? Someone's gotta track down all those clones and fix them. Of course, that will never happen. We'll just keep around every copy forever. Hopefully the one you find will be the latest. Doubtful though.

Because filling up the network drives with useless duplicates is second nature to managers, I throw rocks.

And the Survey Says….

Every year the Shitshow takes an employee satisfaction survey in order to figure out how people really feel about work and what areas the Shitshow can work on to make things better.  Once the results come out all of the flunktional managers scramble to start spinning the results and figuring out what they can do to make it look like they care.  Well this year the flunktional managers have out done themselves.

As far as overall job satisfaction the rankings are up a whole 1%, from 64% to 65%.  Of course they all patted themselves on the back and pointed out that it the increase was because of initiatives they took on to improve satisfaction. 

After the good news, the Zookeeper turned to the lowest ranking result.  It might be a surprise to you but people complained the most about feeling overworked. 

At first I was surprised, but then it all made since.  Any Bob figure, who does about an hour of real work on a good day, will always feel over worked even if he/she did nothing but surf the web.  The other 25% of the people who actually does do work is pulling the weight of 3 Bob figures so naturally they are overworked.

Of course this wouldn’t be the Shitshow if the problem wasn’t addressed in pure Shitshow fashion.   In order to address the overworked situation, the Zookeeper announced he would be asking for volunteers to form a task force to meet weekly to understand the issue and come up with solutions.   Of course this would be on your own time, as a project can’t fund this type of work and overhead is tight this year. 

That’s right; to help solve the issue of people feeling overworked the Zookeeper wants people to volunteer their own time doing more work. 

Because the Shitshow's solution to being overworked is asking you to do more work for free, I throw rocks.  

What Happens When You Stay Too Long At The Shitshow

I came across this story the other day about an aerospace engineer who lost his mind. Surely, it was caused by working at the Shitshow. He was probably a normal guy once, but all the bureaucracy, nepotism, and bad management probably drove him crazy. I can imagine him coming home everyday, sad and depressed about his job, yet somehow addicted to the abuse he was getting at work. He probably tried to find some extracurricular activities to help him get his mind off work, but nothing seemed to work. So he took more and more drastic measures, until he finally found a hobby similar enough to working at the Shitshow.

Click Here to Read About Kenneth Pinyan

Because taking it from a horse is like working at the Shitshow, I throw rocks.

T-Rod - II

If you missed the T-Rod introduction, be sure to read “Introducing T-Rod.”   Unfortunately for me, I’m still working with this guy.  On the flip side, fortunately for you I’m still working with this guy and post pretty much just write themselves.

On Friday, we were in the middle of a highly visible activity, meaning that all of the flunktional managers took time away from surfing the web to witness some stuff going on.  T-Rod was in charge, and running the room like in true T-Rod style.

  

At a moment of heavy activity, a new hire (one of the only good new hires I’ve seen in over 7 years at the Shitshohw), and a customer representative were asking T-Rod some questions about what was going on.  The added stress of a couple of questions sent T-Rod over the top, and in a moment of management clarity he channeled none other than King Kong.  In his mini melt down moment he yelled at the new hire and customer “I don’t have time for you right now, go stand in the corner until I tell you to come out.”

That’s right, T-Rod told a new hire and customer to go stand in the corner.  All of the flunktional managers in the room at the time choose to ignore the situation and looked the other way. 

Because full grown professionals are treated like 4 year olds, I throw rocks.    

Garage Safety - II

With a follow-up to his first post Garage Safety, Tapatio tells us about yet another garage safety flyer.  Enjoy!

In case you missed the first post, due to the fact that there's a myriad of Bob-type figures roaming the grounds of the Shitshow, they've decided to pay a group of people to write memos and post them everywhere...about safety in the parking garage! 

The first memo didn’t do enough to bring awareness to garage safety, so the team got down to business to bring us yet another gem.  I kid you not; this is posted on every floor of the parking structure:

- More Parking Structure Awareness -

While driving in the parking structure your speed should not exceed the speed of a jogger.

When making a turn, if you need to brake to stay in your lane, you're driving too fast.

Look for pedestrians while you drive through the parking structure.

Because reading the parking structure safety memos makes me want to drive off the top of the structure, I throw rocks. 

Folders, Folders, Folders

As a follow up to a previous post explaining the difficulty of Finding a Part, I must now describe the chaos of finding a file (Word Document, Excel Spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation, etc.) on the network drives. While we have a Data Management System to keep track of official files that have gone through the rigorous release process, most of our files are simply stored in random folders on the network drives. These files include: any in-work data, company procedures, ‘how-to’ guides, email correspondences, clarifications, instructions, raw data, pictures, etc. Think of it as your ‘My Documents’ folder then multiply it by 100,000. We’re talking millions and millions of unorganized files and folders.

But why are they unorganized? Because that’s what happens when nobody takes charge to implement a good filing system with proper naming conventions and folder hierarchy. Instead, the IT guys created a network drive where everyone and anyone could create new folders and save their files wherever they wanted. When that network drive became full, they created another one, and another one, and another one until we had about a dozen of unorganized network drives hosting a collection of years and years of clutter.

As time passed, there were attempts to rein in the chaos, but none of them gained any traction. One Flunktional Manager tried to tackle the issue by creating a bunch of new folders and then directed everyone to ‘save their files to these proper folders from now on.’ But just like every action Flunktional Management undertakes, they never followed through. So after a few weeks, engineers went back to their old ways, saving files wherever they felt like saving them. In addition, the Flunktional Manager’s plan was ironically undermined by other Flunktional Managers who wanted to create their own system of folders.

A final contributor to all this clutter is the reluctance of Program Management to delete any of these files/folders in case they are somehow ‘crucial’ to the program. And I don’t blame them. I’m sure there is some really important stuff in those folders…out there… somewhere. But who has the time to siphon through all of that data? Well, that’s kinda what you have to do each time you want to find something. It makes Finding a Part seem like a walk in the park.

For example, say you are looking for a ‘How-To’ Guide on making corporate PowerPoint presentations. You not only don’t know where the file is saved or what it’s called, you don’t even know if such a document exists. It would make sense for this document to exist, but it might not. Nobody knows for sure unless they’ve found it. Where would you even start looking for this hypothetical document that you aren’t even sure exists? Maybe there is a ‘How-To’ folder somewhere, or maybe there are several ‘How-To’ folders, all hidden within other folders that you wouldn’t normally look in. No matter what, you have several hours of wheel spinning ahead of you.

Because I can spend hours searching and still not have a definitive answer on whether something exists or not, I throw rocks.

Shitshow Valentine

Mr. Sunshine sent me a Valentine that pretty much captures the love the Shitshow shows it's minions.   Because something that looks so sad is so true, I throw rocks. 

Finding the Part

The other day, I had to look up the part number of a component that I knew existed, but that I didn’t know much anything else about. This happens quite frequently at the Shitshow because the products we make in aerospace (planes, rockets, satellites) are literally made up of hundreds of thousands of parts, each with their own unique part number. Of course, we have tens of thousands of engineers working on these individual parts, but like an assembly line, engineers are only familiar with the small amount of parts they are assigned to work on. So if you are working on the “nose antenna” and want to compare it to the “tail antenna”, but the only area you have ever worked on is the “nose”, then you have some work ahead of you to find the part. When I say “find a part”, I mean “find the part number” because once you have that you can find out everything else you need to know about it: what it looks like, who designed it, who makes it, what material it’s made out of, etc.

There are several methods to find a part.

Method 1 is called “Scavenger Hunt”. This is where you go from engineer to engineer seeking advice, following their leads until you find a person that actually knows the part number. The first guy you talk to, Engineer A, never knows anything, but he advises you to talk to Engineer B. Engineer B will also know nothing, but he will advise you to talk to Engineer C, and so on. By the time you talk to Engineer G, you will usually be able to figure out what the part number is. While it sounds simple, this method is the slowest because nobody is ever at their desk when you need them. (Approximate time to locate part number: 1.5 days)

Method 2 is called “Needle in the Haystack”. In this method, you can use a special computer program that can load every single part of the plane, satellite, etc. and show it to you in one big 3D model. While it sounds impressive that a program can show you hundreds of thousands of parts and how they all fit together, it totally hogs your computer’s memory. Even if you want to see just the “tail”, there’s still tens of thousands of parts that make up the tail. So loading a 3-D model of the “tail” on your computer can still take several hours. Once it does load, it is just a mess of intertwined parts that you have to sort through, clicking and hiding each one that is obstructing what you really want to find: that “tail antenna”. Once you find it, you can click on it and see the part number. (Approximate time to locate part number: 0.5 days)

Method 3 is called “Guess my name”. With this method, you do a series of searches in the Data Management System, a complex data management software system that essentially stores the definition of every part, product, system, and assembly in a “virtual vault.” (Think of it as a virtual filing cabinet that has the blueprints for every part and the instructions on how to put all the parts together to build the product.) The “Guess my name” method is exactly what is sounds like – you just start searching for terms in the Data Management System just as you would in Google. The only problem is this isn’t Google. It’s not user friendly and only searches for exact matches. And because the Shitshow never really came up with a proper method on how to name parts, engineers arbitrarily named the parts themselves. So you not only have to search for the term “tail antenna”, you also have to search for “tail antena”, “rear antenna”, “aft antenna”, “Tail Antenna” (because it’s case sensitive), “TAIL ANT” (because engineers like to use acronyms), etc. You get the picture. It’s a daunting task, but you can usually find what you’re looking for if you’re smart about it. (Approximate time to locate part number: 1-2 hours)

Because the best method of finding what you’re looking for at the Shitshow is to guess, I throw rocks.

Garage Safety

This post was submitted by long time throwing-rocks follower Tapatio.  Enjoy!

Not only are parking lots dangerous at the Shitshow (see the Fixing the Parking Situation series of post) parking garages are just as bad or worse – in a more contained area you have more cars being driven by Bob figures and more Bob figures walking around hopelessly trying to find their car while reading emails on their black berries.

Apparently there have been a number of near misses in the parking structure.  The Shitshow’s solution was to post the following safety memo on every floor of the parking structure.   

-Parking Structure Safety Awareness-

Please be careful in the parking structure. 

As a driver slow down be sure to keep an eye out for pedestrians and other cars.

As a pedestrian watch out for cars.  

Because the Shitshow’s parking structure safety advice is less informative than a 1980’s G.I. Joe public service announcement, I throw rocks. 

Queen Perfume - V

This story was submitted by an anonymous fellow rock thrower who unfortunately had the joy of smelling what the Queen was cooking.

While I don’t even sit in the same building as Queen Perfume, or work on the same program I’ve had to put up with her stink more than once.   A couple weeks back, the Queen was in a lot of meetings in my office area.  Since the Queen was too lazy to bring her laptop or walk back to her office in between meetings she would just find someone’s cubical which was empty at the time and start using that persons computer.

Luckily for me, she decided to use my computer.  For various reasons I’m not at my cubical very often, usually because I’m down on the floor trouble shooting some mistake made by a Bob figure.  Needless to say my computer is often times unoccupied, which made itself a prime target for Queen Perfume.   When I finally got back to my office I could smell a slight odder and noticed that the Queen had been logged on to my computer.  At first I didn’t mind, after all the, computer is Shitshow property, it’s not mine to claim and I was logged off.  However, after a couple minutes I started getting sick from the lingering smell.

The next day I was running an 8 hour simulation on my computer so I locked my computer this time.  Long and behold when I cam back at the end of the day I could smell the Queen had been nearby.  To my surprise she had logged me off, which required her to turn off and on the computer, so she could check her email in between meetings.  8 hours of work, down the drain.  I sent an email to her flunktional manager and cc’d her on it.  I figured this would be effective way to throw rocks.   A couple days later without incident I thought my rock actually hit something.  Well I’d be wrong.

Yesterday I kicked off another simulation, this time a 16 hour run, towards the end of the day and locked my computer.  What do I see when I come in this morning; the Queen once again hard booted the computer to log me off so she could check her Facebook status.   This time 16 hours of work down the drain.
I did the only thing I could, I found the email I sent a couple weeks ago and replied back to the Queen and her flunktional manager once again explaining the situation and pointing out that this was not the first time this has happened or brought to their attention.   Of course at the end of the day I didn’t have a response from either the Queen or her flunktional manager.

Because it’s just a matter of time before the Queen throws away another 16 hours of my work without her flunktional manager giving a damn, I throw rocks.

Shitshow Characters: The Cool Dork

To continue our Shitshow character series, this week we introduce a new character - the Cool Dork. Every Shitshow has a few, so read carefully and see if you can spot the Cool Dork at your workplace.

The Cool Dork – An engineer who is such a dork that he still tries to impress people by doing things that he thinks will make him look cool. He does this because he is insecure as an engineer and wants to break the 'misconception' that he is a nerd, while he actually ends up confirming it.

How do you identify the Cool Dork? For starters, he drives a fast motorcycle to work, which he calls his "bike". It has to be one of those "rice rocket" street racing types. To ensure everyone is aware that he rides a motorcycle, he wears a motorcycle jacket (even though he only lives 5 miles away) and walks into/out of the office wearing it everyday. He also brings in his motorcycle helmet (rather than locking it to his motorcycle) and proudly displays it at his desk so that everyone can see how cool he is. Throughout the day, he will talk about his "bike" as well as other "cool" activities that he does on weekends, such as "getting my pilots license" or "trying to beat my own time at the track."

Because a nerd in camouflage is still a nerd, I throw rocks.

Fixing the Parking Situation - III

We have an update on the parking situation. (Before you read this post, make sure you familiarize yourself with the posts Fixing the Parking Situation - I and Fixing the Parking Situation - II)

After numerous complaints from employees and a few car accidents, it appears someone has finally taken notice of the incredibly dangerous parking situation that the Shitshow unnecessarily created. Maybe someone in the Legal department finally realized that if they don’t do something about the ten intersections in the parking lot, the Shitshow might have a lawsuit on its hands. Not only are the car accidents going to continue, but it’s only a matter time before a car runs somebody over.

So today, an corporate email was sent out to “explain the ongoing parking improvements that will be going on over the weekend.” The best part of the email was that it was hilariously titled “Safety First” The email begins with an explanation of why the Shitshow decided to screw up the parking situation in the first place (explained in Fixing the Parking Situation - I). Next, they describe how they will paint the word ‘STOP’ at each of the ten dangerous intersections that they created in the middle of the parking lot (see Fixing the Parking Situation – II). And because there are still non-employees using the parking lot as a short cut (which was the main reason for the parking lot redesign), they will put up a sign at the entrance that says “No Thru Traffic”.

Of course, everyone knows that this isn’t going to fix anything. If they really wanted to fix it, all they’d have to do is make it back to normal. But no, they’re just gonna keep trying to make it work. Meanwhile, people will roll through the ‘STOP’ markers at each intersection. They almost have to because you can’t see anything unless you slightly pass the parked SUVs that are blocking your view at each intersection. And non-employees will ignore the “No Thru Traffic” signs because…well, we already have those signs. I guess they will can the font bigger; that’ll really scare ‘em away!

No, this “Fixing the Parking Situation” is far from over. Stay tuned for more posts!

Introducing T-Rod

It’s time to introduce a new character to the Throwing Rocks community, as with all charters introduced (King Kong, Baby Kong, Queen Perfume, Mr. Sunshine, Duck Face, Bob, and so on) this character is based on 100% truth.  Please let me introduce to you, the man, the flunky, T-Rod!  

On the surface T-Rod seems pretty laid back and uses catch phrases from the 80’s such as “cool,” “rad,”  and “right on man” to show how "chill" he is.  However, despite his apparently laid back style, T-Rod can’t handle any stress what so ever.  When something unexpected comes up, work piles up, or time is running tight T-Rod looses it.  Once things are back to normal he reverts back to his catch phrases. 

T-Rod is also mentally challenged.  Despite having 20 years of experience he still doesn’t understand basics and doesn’t know where to find answers on his own.  Often times his own stupidity is the cause for the stress he can’t handle.

Since he’s been at the Shitshow for 20 years he’s risen to various leadership positions, which require both people management skills as well as technical know how which T-Rod posses neither.   Not that has stopped any other manager or leader at the Shitshow. 

Lucky for me I’m working with T-Rod right now on a somewhat extended project. Luckily for you this means there are bound to be some great throwing-rock stories to read in the near future. 

Because character development writes itself at the Shitshow, I throw rocks.  

Engineers Week

Well, it’s that time of year again to strong arm engineers into taking part in “Engineers Week”, a phony attempt by the Shitshow to promote teambuilding and foster a “fun workplace”. For those of you that don’t know, Engineers Week is nationwide event, created by the National Society of Professional Engineers, intended to raise public awareness of engineers' contributions to society. While I’m sure this event was created with good intentions and runs smoothly in other places, you can leave it to the Shitshow to bastardize this effort.

At the Shitshow, anything “fun” has to be regulated and mandated. Most likely, some Shitshow corporate fat cat decided that participating in Engineers Week would be good for the company’s image and good for boosting morale. So he directed Functional Management to get their engineers involved in these “fun and friendly competitions". Functional management, who is used to doing nothing and doesn’t understand leadership, suddenly had to entice their engineers to participate in a voluntary, extracurricular event that employees would have to do on their own time.What better way to get people to participate in a voluntary event than a mandate? While it’s under the premise of fun and games, engineers are now required to participate by having “Participating in Engineer’s Week” as one of their annual Performance Review goals.

The worst thing about Engineers Week is how teams get created. Because Functional Managers have to organize all the teams, they become the de facto leaders of the teams. And if there is anything worse than working under shitty management, it’s working under shitty management and not getting paid for it.

Because I’d rather get a bad performance review than participate in Engineers Week, I throw rocks.