Shining Beacon

At one of our last all hands meetings, the Zookeeper was talking about how we all needed to execute on our programs better.  He then went on to talk about one program and how it was a shining beacon. 

Of course the shining beacon is only a light the Shitshow could be proud off.   Not knowing much about the program I looked into the history of it.  Turns out the program is more than 5 years late, it is considered a huge financial loss to the company, and its business model other executives now widely admitted was flawed.  However the Zookeeper couldn’t stop singing it praise and told us that we should look to it as a model of success. 

Because the shining beacon is nothing more than a train at the end of the tunnel, I throw rocks.  

Summer Kong

 I came across this picture on the web and almost fell out of my seat laughing. Because this picture looks like it was taken from last weeks pay your own way, on your own time summer picnic, I throw rocks.

Mr. Sunshine - Shitshow

Mr. Sunshine just sent me his latest tribute to the Shitshow. It was inspired by the styling of Curtis Kulig who I encourage you to Google.  Feel free to print it out on a color printer at work and hang it in your cubical with pride!

Feed the Beast

Today I walked by a fellow rock throwers cube and saw her updating the Wiki.  I thought this was a strange until I looked a little closer to what updates she was actually making.  When saw what she was doing I almost fell over from laughing so hard.

Turns out her new way of throwing rocks is to upload the largest files she can find, including pictures, onto the Wiki.  Given the horrible layout of the Wiki she’s found that it’s useful to make this upload on various pages, after all why leave a broken link when you can leave the actual document.

When I asked her why she was doing this, she replied “I’m feeding the beast until the belly bursts, sometimes that’s the only way to kill it.”

Because my friend is getting her Wiki update credits while throwing rocks, I encourage you all to feed the beast.  

Always on Call

Today's post comes from a guest contributor, who we will call 'Demented':

Working for a defense contractor, some of us get the "privilege" to go out on flight test support. Most people might consider this to be a good thing, and maybe it is the first time you get to do it. The idea of seeing the product you are working on in the field is kind of cool. I got hired on and was told to expect 25% of my time to be in the field for flight test support. Ok I signed on (first job out of college) for the job, but I had no idea what 25% of MY time truly meant.

Within the first week of being with the company, I was told to fly across the country to get trained for flight test. I got to fly out on a Thursday, and when I got there, found out that flight test was canceled for Friday and would resume on Monday. So now I was stuck on the other side of the country for the next week (where I know absolutely no one) and the two guys that were training me took off to see family / friends. I got to spend a weekend in a town with nothing to do but watch T.V. in the hotel room. After that week of training was over, I figured I was good for at least a few weeks before I had to go out again. Boy was I wrong. I got back into town on Sunday, showed up for work on Monday and was told to be at another test site the next day.

The whole travel aspect never got any better, it only got worse from there out. We regularly get phone calls from our lead on Saturday to travel Sunday to support Monday. There is no schedule for who supports what, and when to expect it. We just take our weekend and pray that the phone doesn't ring with a caller ID from who we now call the Dementor. (Because he sucks the happiness right out of the room - Harry Potter Reference).

My favorite last min travel story is when I got a call on Saturday to fly to the East Coast on Sunday. I had canceled my personal plans and booked the flight. The next day, I get on my flight and landed at 10 PM EST. Upon landing, I turned my phone on and got a voicemail time stamped at 3 PM telling me that my trip was canceled and hopefully I hadn't left yet.

Because my boss calls me on Saturday to travel on Sunday, I throw rocks.

Company Fridge – II

As was pointed out in yesterday’s Throwing Mud, the company fridge often times becomes a nightmare of forgotten leftovers and personal items that take on a life of their own.  Well, the Shitshow has a sure fire way to deal with the problem. 

Months ago the local office administrator put a sign on the refrigerator that all food must be labeled with your name and date, if not it would be thrown out at the end of the day.  This reign of refrigerator terror lasted a couple of days until the OA moved onto her next crusade. 

Within days the refrigerator returned to its normal crowded state, and within a month returned to a science experiment in mold.  Mind you the sign threatening daily clean out is still on the fridge. 

I guess someone decided to do some work, because yesterday they cleaned out the refrigerator last night throwing out everything and anything that wasn’t labeled.  How do I know someone cleaned it out?  Because the OA sent out a nasty gram:


I was supposed to take care of our refrigerator in our flunktional area and planned on taking care of it this morning.  I got in this morning and everything was gone.

There are already some very unhappy people now including myself.  I had at least $25 worth of food in there. 

If anyone knows anything please call me.

Because some minion took the law in their own hands resulting in a department wide nasty gram, I’m inspired to keep throwing rocks.  

Would You Like Fries With That?

Today I went to lunch at Mickey D’s.  While I realize this isn’t the best place for my health, sometimes a 10 pc chicken nugget and a caramel sundae helps me make it through another day in paradise.  To my surprise I saw a new addition to McDonald’s, a job kiosk, so I went and checked it out. 

The job kiosk provided a window where anyone could local for job openings at that local McDonald’s, others in the local area and even at corporate.  I typed in a few key words from my recent experience and pressed enter:  0 results. 

I then decided to stretch my experience and typed in management, to my surprise a shift supervisor position was available.  I found a manager behind the counter and asked about the opening. 

Me:  Is that shift supervisor position still open?

Manger:  Yes.  Are you interested?

Me:  Yes, yes I am?

Manager:  Do you have any supervisor experience?
Me:  Well, I’ve lead a team of engineers in a software update.  I’ve also lead shifts at work.  I’m the lead engineer on my current project too. 

Manager:  Ummm, do you have any fast food experreince? 

Me:  Unfortunately no.   

Manager:  Yeah, we’re looking for someone with fast food experience.

Me:  I have an MBA….

Manager:  Uhhhh, like I said we’re looking for someone with more relevant experience.

Because after years of working at the Shitshow, I’m not even qualified to ask “would you like fries with that”, I throw rocks. 

Charge Numbers

While taking the online ethics training a few weeks ago, I came across a section titled "Using Proper Charge Codes". It reminded me what an absurd business environment we work in, where each employee has to allocate each hour worked to a specific "charge code". For those of you that do not know what "charge codes" are, allow me to give you a little background.

When a defense contractor wins a contract from the government, it receives a pool of money to perform that statement of work – i.e. "the budget". In an effort to keep better track of costs, management breaks down this budget into a series of smaller budgets, each having an allocated amount of money and "charge code" assigned to it. It's how management keeps track of their micro-budgets, monitoring how much employees are charging to each charge code until the money runs out.

Charge numbers can be very useful, but too much of anything can also be very bad. On larger programs, management has created so many charge codes (hundreds, if not thousands) that they've completely lost sight of the big picture. They spend most of their day trying to make sense of all these charge numbers – only to end up creating even more charge numbers because they can't understand the current ones. It's a cycle of charge codes that are arbitrarily derived, too narrowly defined, and overlapping in scope with other existing charge numbers.

As a result, tracking costs has essentially become meaningless and there's always confusion as to what employees should charge to.Everyone is affected by it, not just management. There are so may charge codes that it can sometimes take you 30 minutes to fill out your timecard. I'm surprised they don't have a charge number for going to the restroom. The question remains: what do I charge the half-hour to for filling out my timecard?
Because I should have a charge number for filling out my timecard, I throw rocks.