All Men Are Created Equal?

Somehow, somewhere, years ago some corporate executive decided that everyone (including management) should be addressed by their first name at huge corporations like the Shitshow ('Bill' rather than 'Mr. Smith'). I never liked that because it's just a phony attempt to give the perception that we are all equal, when nothing could be further from the truth. Upper management is so far removed from the everyday engineer that we might as well call them "Mas'er". You see, my manager "Bill" never invited me to his house or to go golfing. He only invites other managers. Hell, "Bill" hasn't even invited me to lunch and barely acknowledges me with a nod when we pass in the hallway.

It's even worse with corporate executives. We're supposed to call them by their first name also, in the chance they might take a surprise tour of our cubicles one day to "boost morale". Your no-good flunktional manager is sure to be standing right by him when this happens, with his nose firmly up the executive's ass.

"Bob, I'd like you to meet Jim, our sector president."
"Hi Jim," you have to reply.

"Hi Jim ?" The guy makes millions of dollars a year, flies the corporate jet, and drives a Bentley, yet I'm supposed to call him "Jim". It's ridiculous. He could crush me with one memo, and I'm just gonna call him Jimbo? Luckily, I probably won't ever see him again, so I won't have to call him anything.

Because I'd rather call my bosses Mas'er than their real names, I throw rocks.

A Tale of Two Cities - II

As mentioned in the post titled “A Tale of Two Cities” the executives recently moved into a brand new building. Part of that move was the renovation of unused space to turn it into cubical farms (see Time To Brag).

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out the outcome. The executive building is actually pretty nice with granite and marble everywhere. It even comes with a gated parking lot of the executives. The executive floor is full of mahogany, cherry wood, big screen televisions, and leather conference chairs. It even comes staffed with it’s own security guard to make sure people have their badges and a receptionist to welcome people to the building. It truly is fitting for the flunky executives who lead the company into a sea of red.

On the other hand the cubical farm leaves much to be desired. In a move to be the “greenest building” at the Shitshow very few overhead lights were installed, instead they installed a couple of skylights. This idea was so well executed about 1 in every 10 cubes falls in a dark void because the skylights are too small and too far apart. To continue with the greenness, air conditioning and heater ducts were placed in the floor. In theory this makes sense, place the cool/warm air near the people instead of having to try to blow it 20 feet down to the people (the new City Center in Vegas uses this strategy brilliantly) but as you can guess the Shitshow did it Bob style. There was no thought on where the cubicles would be placed in relation to the floor plan and the embedded air ducts. Needless to say some people have constant cold air blowing directly on the feet while others don’t have any air at all. The last brilliantly executed green strategy was to allow more natural light in through 10 foot tall windows on one side of the building. What the Shitshow didn’t account for was the reflection off the neighboring building. Any cubical on the wall of windows in unusable in the afternoon from the the glare and heat being reflected into the cubicles. Lastly, in an effort to save money by not having to staff high school drop outs and grandmas as security guards (see Shitshow Insecurity) the building is fitted with a badge-reading motorized turnstile door. Of course the door rejects half the people who start walking through it. This causes a huge backup of people trying to get in and out of the building. In fact, one person had to walk half a city block to another door because he kept getting rejected by the door. Despite all these flaws, the building is highly celebrated amongst the Shitshow managers as a cost saving and green success.

Because the executives are lavished to no end while the minions are forced to work in a building (assuming we can get through the door) that the Shitshow could only be proud of, I throw rocks.

Gone Phishing

The other day, a manager at the Shitshow received an phishing email. For those of you who don’t know, a phishing email is an email requesting personal information that appears legitimate but is actually sent from a cyberhacker. I have to say this email was good. It looked exactly like the real emails that the IT department regularly sends us.

What is even more shocking is that we actually have a manager competent enough to have caught it. The manager asked our IT department if the email was real, and they quickly told him it was a fake. This is where the cleverness ends. The manager then decides to forward the email (with the suspicious link in it) to all the other managers and tells them “Don’t click on this link”. Then those managers blindly forward that email to every one of their engineers, with the dangerous link still in it. They didn’t even bother taking it out, or a perform a simple “Cut/Paste As Text” operation. They just left the dangerous element in there.

That’s akin to sending everyone a virus and then telling them “Hey! Here’s a virus, but don’t click on it” Of course, when busy engineers get several dozen emails a day, they’re too tired to read any of them thoroughly. Chances are someone is going to click on the link accidentally – a link they would have never gotten in the first place had their managers not blindly forwarded it in the first place.

Because management doesn’t know how to modify an email that they forward, I throw rocks.

It's just a matter of time

Last year I worked on a huge project, many hours or overtime were spent cleaning up other peoples problems in order to deliver the best product possible to the customer. Years of previous work were riding on this portion of the project. It was a hard time but we got through it and after weeding out all the bob figures early on, we actually had a great team.

9 months later the Shitshow finally gets their act together to give awards out just for this project. Really, 9 months later? In 9 months:

A non Shitshow company could have designed, developed and brought to market new products.
A human live could have gone through the entire gestation cycle and been born.
College students could finish 25% of their education.
Heck, it only took an additional 3 months to construct the original Disneyland

Because the simple task or printing out certificates and ordering lunch takes 9 months, I throw rocks

A Tale of Two Flunky Managers

As if working for King Kong isnt bad enough, imagine working for King Kong and the Zookeeper at the same time. Meaning both of them come to your meetings all the time and give you "direction" and "career advice". King Kong's typical career advice usually consists of him screaming at you for 5 to 10 minutes and then telling you phrases like "do this because I say so" or "I know more than you, Ive been doing this longer".

Anyways, I digress. Recently the Zookeeper made the project that I work on a "lean initiative" project. Who knows what the hell that means? Part of this lean directive was to prioritize tasks and make sure that each member of your team has one task at a time and not to start a new task until the current one is completed. The Zookeeper told me that if I dont use this lean strategy then "its my way or the highway". Nothing motivates people like bullying and intimidation tactics. I decided to start using this strategy because I have no choice and then King Kong comes to one of my status meetings and gets concerned we are "spending too much time on problems and not sarting new tasks to flush out new problems". King Kong goes into his usual fit of rage on me so I tell him that his boss, the Zookeeper, told me to do this. King Kong just sat there with a stupid look on his face and said he will talk to him about "the direction the project needs to go in". I never heard back from either of them.

Because Shitshow management cant even agree on a flunky management style, I throw rocks.

Why don't you?

Very few people know the true identity of Jacko, but those who do always ask me the same question:

“If you hate your job so much why don’t you just get a job somewhere else?”

What they don’t understand is that having the Shitshow on your resume for more than a couple years is like have an albatross around your neck. Non-Shitshow companies know any skills you might have had have been withered away by working at the Shitshow. In fact I know of a young hot company, ironically in the same industry, which automatically throws away any resume that has more than 2 years of experience at the Shitshow. Their reasoning is that if it took you more than 2 years to figure out you work for a Shitshow then you’re probably a Bob figure or a Shitshow-router and know nothing more than how to hold endless CCB, hold flawed RCCAs, and update useless Wikis.

Because the Rime of the Modern Rock Thrower is a tragic tale without escape, I throw rocks.

An Assembly-Line of Shit

There are several reasons to call your workplace the Shitshow, but in some cases, the building you work in is literally an assembly-line of shit. To be more specific, we have such inadequate bathroom capacity that the toilets are in perpetual use. The stalls are used so constantly that I forgot what a cold toilet seat even feels like. You’d think they installed seat warmers.

After lunch, it’s pretty much a guarantee that all of the stalls will be taken. In fact, there is a one hour window that you’re better off avoiding the bathroom all together, if you can hold it. Otherwise, you’ll have to try every restroom on the floor, or even go to another floor, before you find one that’s available. Usually, you’ll find the one with the lock that’s been broken for the past three years. Nothing like taking a dump while holding the door with one hand - thank you maintenance people!

While bathroom capacity is a problem, it doesn’t help that the quality of our cafeteria food can easily make you go several times a day. So even in the afternoon, it’s not uncommon to have to wait for a stall. This steady stream of new “inventory” creates a constant odor that never gets a chance to air out. In addition, the toilets get clogged daily, adding to the odor. Nobody ever tells anyone, not until someone comes along who has the ingenious idea to just keep flushing until it overflows all over the bathroom floor. This happens about twice a week.

Because bathroom capacity is so poor that we’d be better off making reservations, I throw rocks.