Recently I’ve become aware of how much that’s going on in commerce, industry and our institutions is a sort of cargo cult of competence.
I’d been noticing some of it — and being baffled — since the nineties by an odd devotion to “procedure” which bordered on “We do the thing the experts do/say to do” and results will be right.
This intruded into my attention first with the publishing establishment turning against cozies. That term is broadening, but back then cozies was “Mysteries with an amateur sleuth, whose scope is within a family or small group of normal people.” All of a sudden in the early nineties, they demanded the cozy follow police procedural rules.
To figure out how wrong this is, go watch Murder She Wrote. Not one thing she does is right from the perspective of “real” crime investigation. Because the rules tie closely to whether you can get evidence accepted in court, most of her “solutions” wouldn’t work. I do get that. I also get that the whole point of the amateur sleuth is to have the plucky person solve things by unorthodox methods.
Which Murder She Wrote qualifies as. However, if you look at more recent mystery series, even those with amateurs have them try to follow the proper “procedure.”
What annoyed me back then, though, was that you’d get lectures from the publishers with the rejection. Our person was supposed to show all respect to the police because “they’re the experts.” Also, Joe Blow who ran a diner was supposed to know all the rules of evidence, etc. Which you know dang well wouldn’t happen. (BTW the way the “but this is not admissible in court” was solved was by having the suspect confess and semi-often die in some way.)
Because that had annoyed me, I started paying attention to how many of the rules and “the way things are now supposed to be done” from certain products being shunned, certain bought, etc. was all according to some often misunderstood “expert” pronouncement, no real thought.
Then came the late nineties, the dot com boom, which I had a weird view of. At the time Dan was trying to jump jobs, and going to a lot of interviews, so I read up on an analyzed the companies he had interviews with. And I quickly realized a lot of the metrics by which a company was considered “solid” or a good prospect were bogus. It had things thrown in, by the rules, because studies showed it was better…. like “Has game room on site for employees” (Because employee happiness made the company more likely to succeed. Which is likely true, but happiness and playing a lot of computer games ON THE JOB are not the same.) Dan interviewed with this company in Denver that had both a gym and various games in the offices, and encouraged you to take unlimited mental health days, etc. They offered a slightly lower salary but a huge amount of stock. So we crawled over their internals before he turned it down, and not only did we conclude that their product/expectation of success was AT BEST optimistic, but we wondered if anyone ever worked, ever. However, they were doing everything by the book in what “experts” in business said should bring enormous success.
Dan turned it down and six months later they were gone. Most of the companies with that model vanished.
But the idea that if you just do things according to a certain set of rules, you’ll get the desired result didn’t.
It mostly prevails in fields that are either closed shop with little visibility from the outside, yes, including police investigations but also everything from medicine to law or in fields willfully trying to hide things from the public. And given that the things it’s based on are usually biased already… it becomes fraught. Take for instance government reporting aid to minorities, when the aid amounts to, say preferential hiring of minorities or the giving of welfare, both of which over time actually degrade conditions for minorities. However, studies will base on whether something is good for minorities or not based on whether such “benefits” are provided.
Police is interesting because I doubt the editors telling us we couldn’t have a bumbling policeman figure in a murder mystery because “they’re highly trained professionals” realize how much of that training is in “Follow the rules so we can’t be sued” and how many murders (over half on average) go unsolved.
In fact, in our hyper litigious society, in almost every profession, more than half the rules on how to do things are designed so the company/institution/whatever isn’t sued.
Oh, and an example of “If we calculate according to these rules we can’t go wrong.” Sometimes, because we get a feeling in our gut this is not our final destination (Also depends on where kids end up of course) I kill my lunch hour eating at the computer and looking up “The best places to live in x state.”
I’d give it way more credence, if half the reasons they think these places are better places to live weren’t insane, bogus, or outright counterproductive. For instance, they often tout “highly rated K-12 institutions” which is … maybe okay, but most of the rating is done by agencies that don’t care if Jimmy can’t read, provided he can tell you how many genders there are supposed to be today. Or “diversity” which gives a HUGE boost to “Sanctuary cities.” Which is great, if you really want Tren D’Aragua in your business, but I really don’t. Then there’s “Gives you money to buy your first house in town.” We accidentally went to one of those places a couple of weeks ago. Okay, it wasn’t accidental, but we could have gone to three or four other places, not necessarily that one. It was just on the way of us going elsewhere. We… Um…. we’d planned to spend the day there, just because it worked with our schedule, but we left after a couple of hours. It wasn’t just that there really wasn’t anything to do, the museums and such closing seemingly at random on the weekend. It was that the entire place was overlaid with a patina of dingy misery. But it is rated as one of the best places to live in the next state, just based on a bunch of abstract measures. Like, you know, diversity.
The proximate cause of this rant is reading a mystery where the main character just took a course to follow the rules and make investigations better. Only all the rules the author is applying actually make the investigation impossible.
The further cause is this feeling that everyone is following “rules” and “Procedures” which are based on some study that no one ever read and which is probably irreproducible, and in the process we’re losing real knowledge and real ability to do things.
At the end of this process are ivy league college presidents who probably can’t read so well, so they plagiarist well-sounding phrases for their required “publications.” And they’re hired for their “diversity” (which mostly means female and can tan, like all the other “diverse” people) not any competence, so that works. Until it doesn’t.
And that’s just the most visible thing crumbling. Right now, hidden from view, I bet you actual essential positions are being not done, because they are occupied by someone who was never taught to do them, except “follow procedure.”
There are places where procedures are essential. Either because you can’t afford to forget something inside a patient you just operated on, to name an instance, or because you need to instill confidence in the public. or both.
For instance, it would be nice that everyone voting is at the minimum a citizen and a resident in the area. For that kind of thing there should be procedures. You’d like to know your doctor was trained according to rigorous standards (which they kind of are, unless they’re imported, sometimes from countries where the standards are very different.) You’d like all the i s dotted and the t s crossed.
But when you start talking about “best practices” of management, or investment, or even investigation, you inevitably find a lot of chaff has fallen into the wheat.
And the people who have been trained to blindly follow the procedures and the rules can’t tell one from the other.
Brace, because things are quietly starting to fall apart everywhere, not helped by the strain being put on them from above by those who think they can remove the walls and the roof will still stand, or that Western Civilization will remain as long as you follow these simple procedures, utterly divorced from the reality and history of the thing.
Brace and learn.
Because we’re going to have to rebuild. And it’s going to hurt like a mother.
But it is what is it, if we want to retain civilization.
According To Hoyt 
Going to the nurse practitioner this afternoon to discuss the results of an MRI (and wasn’t that fun).
Seems like everywhere I go, the first person, and often the last person, seen is a nurse practitioner. They may be very good, but they’re basically following flow diagnostic flow charts. But the doctors keep retiring…
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And new doctors are treated like slaves, because the imported ones are willing to be and–
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You think doctors are treated like slaves now, wait til the government nationalizes health care.
If they do that, where will Canadians go to get decent health care? :-P
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I know. You know where I came from, right?
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Oh, they’ll do what the UK does–
import them on the cheap from India.
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Already happening here, although many appear to be Pakistani.
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Ah, the Castrogonia model….
Interesting, I’m thinking of doing an epistolary murder mystery with ALH, but nobody seems to want to play. I will have a dense policeman in it, but the main character will be a PI. They don’t have to play by the rules, do they?
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No. Trad pub is no longer a thing.
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In my experience (anecdotes, not data; your mileage may vary) Nurse Practitioners are smarter than doctors. I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating:
When I was in middle school, I came down with what I thought was gas, then constipation, and went to see the pediatrician. I don’t recall what he diagnosed it as, but he brushed off Mom’s fear that it could be appendicitis because I could walk and wasn’t doubled over in pain. The pressure in my abdomen got worse, so Mom took me back a day or two later, same thing, then she took me back again the day after that. IIRC the doctor accused me of faking.
Finally, Mom took me back but insisted we see the Nurse Practitioner, not the doctor. NP took one look at me and told Mom to take me to the ER right away. Long story short, I was checked in to the hospital at about 9 in the morning, by 2 I was going under the knife to remove a perforated (but not ruptured) appendix. IIRC, the thing ruptured shortly after they put in in the dish in the OR. I’m told the pediatrician REFUSED to believe I’d actually had appendicitis because I wasn’t displaying textbook systems.
And then a few years back I was super sick. Couldn’t figure out why, but I wasn’t sleeping, had no appetite, and had what felt like a non-stop low-level panic attack for three weeks straight. Couldn’t get into see a doctor, so I saw an NP instead. NP thought my symptoms sounded like some sort of thyroid issue, but noted on my chart that I was taking a B-complex multivitamin as well as a dedicated biotin supplement daily. She gave me a prescription for a blood test, but told me to stop taking the vitamins for 72 hours before getting the test done because “Vitamin B can give a false positive, make you appear hyperthyroidic when you’re not.” So I cut out the supplements and was pretty much back to normal within two days. Still got the blood work done and everything came back perfectly normal.
Long story short, I’d been unknowingly taking well over ten times the daily recommended value of multiple B-vitamins for months, to the point where I was essentially overdosing. And that much excessive vitamin b in your system can screw with your hormonal systems, thyroid, endocrine system, cause insomnia, loss of appetite, basically everything that was wrong with me. I’d seen enough doctors at that practice to doubt that any of them would have made that connection.
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Everything from the right side of my sternum to my shoulder is really uncomfortable. To the point if you told me I had a golf ball stuck somewhere in the area I’d be inclined to believe you. Current theory is a pinched nerve, but we’ll see.
The nurse practitioner who owns the practice is an old friend of my beloved and got her training as a nurse in Vietnam. Her, I trust. I mostly trust her people, but they are younger and less experienced.
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I haven’t seen my oncologist for 3 years I think. My appointments are all with the NP.
I’m pretty sure I still have the same doctor, but they come and go. Sometimes they tell me. Nevertheless, the doctor’s English was so poor I did not understand a thing she was saying and I’m good with accents.
The NP is an outstanding person and extremely competent. She even called my neurologist’s office during one of my appointments with her, because he had written an incorrect dosage for me for one prescription.
That guy is a craven idiot. He sits cowering in the corner of the exam room with a mask over his full beard.
He has never once done an actual neurological exam. He just rattles off a list of $8,000 a month MS drugs and tells me to pick one.
I asked him how I’m supposed to do that because I have no idea what interactions there might be with my chemo drugs and he said, most people just pick the one that has the side effects they can live with.
Yeah. No. I will just continue my slow decline for free.
Unfortunately, my insurance insists I have a neurologist and he is the only one available.
It’s all a racket.
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one of my oncologists moved about an hour away to be closer to the lake, so I only his his NP now. Honestly, I have no idea why I s so either one since I get all my tests ordered by, and results explained by, the chemo oncologist.
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Autoimmune diseases, like MS, are the WORST. Foreign doctors often have the belief that, with the collection of symptoms reported, and the fact that many sufferers are female, we are just faking. A lot of that bias is cultural/religious, not what the universities have taught.
I was on an RA Facebook site, that i eventually had to un-join. Too depressing to read account after account of health plans’ forcing too few choices upon their members, and to see, again and again, the symptoms AND test results clearly SCREAMING “This is a SERIOUS problem!”, only to have the doctors suggest opoids or other medications with multiple side effects.
I dread the day that the only effective drugs I can take will be the biologics. The list of side effects is almost as long as a CVS receipt.
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Several of the B-Complexes are fat-soluble. And even water-soluble ones can do damage before they get washed out.
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The old model was that most doctors were mostly small businessmen, with some percentage “affiliated” with a hospital.
In the 1990s this started to change often driven by HIPAAA and Electronic Medical Records requirements. The extra office headcount needed to manage the bureaucratic overhead ate into their profit margin. Some went into associations with other doctors to spread the overhead out, others moved into some kind of executive role, and a few held on to the old way.
The current model is for someone – at one time it was often an insurance company – to set up a clinic or buy an association, then hire doctors as employees, just like file clerks and janitors. Nurse practitioners became the default; you only get an MD’s time if it’s justified by office policy. And both are generally short-term employees; it’s not that uncommon for someone to see a different NP or doctor at every visit, because the old one isn’t there any more.
Those single-doctor and privately owned clinics? They’re on their way out. I know two MDs who are still working, on his his 70s and the other in his early 80s, because they based part of their retirement package on selling their business to another doctor. Both have been for sale for years, but it seems there’s no interest other than the big clinics that basically just want to buy their patient list.
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In the early ’70s, Mom worked briefly for the AMA in Chicago. Later she moved to a consultancy in the suburbs that did a lot of work for hospitals and such. At that time (mid 70s to mid 80s), HMOs were the big thing, and I think they started to drive the trend to multidoctor practices.
When I moved to California in the mid 70s, I went to a medical clinic in town. It already had a wide variety of docs. They didn’t do dental and had no hand surgeons, but a lot of it was one-stop shopping.
I had appendicitis in January ’76 and went to the clinic around 10AM. Oldest Brother had his Christmas ’75, so the regular doc tended to discount my symptoms as a Munchausen. I didn’t hit the ceiling with pressure. OTOH, the senior surgeon saw me, said he had the same problem (being fat does make that pressure test fail). Was on a gurney to the OR by 7PM. Very hot appendix.
Said clinic affiliated with a nearby hospital a few years before I left California. The downside for me was my (paper) records went into the vault with a to-be-tossed flag when the retention timer went off. Could have used those…
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Had mostly good results with NPs. One guy runs a rural clinic (TPTB tried to Borg and/or shut him down, but a lot of angry patients put the kibosh on that cunning plan), with his cash cow being flu shots. He did COVID shots, but his multi-page disclaimer, needing initials and signatures for each section had the expected result of not too many takers. I’ve also seen him for a tooth gone bad when my dentist was away for Christmas holiday. He only had penicillin, but it got me through until the dentist got back for a molarectomy. I liked that tooth…
The low-cost clinic, in a mostly Native American town, handled white people and those kicked out of Tribal Health. Never saw any ugly scenes, but there were rumors. One NP was by-the-book, with procedures maybe 5 years out of date. His successor was a former Army medic. Good work, but he had problems with female patients (which he neglected to disclose for this position). When the word made it to the bosses, he was out the door. (Lasted several months–not sure how that clusterf–k happened.)
The cardiac subclinic of the main medical complex (hospital, multiple practices, plus a day surgery center) has an NP. I saw her when my main doc couldn’t make it for my annual appointment. Good work, got maybe 90% of what the regular doc would have done. I didn’t need the additional 10%.
Last was the NP I saw when I realized that the knee I injured in January wasn’t healing near the end of February. She did a tentative diagnosis of torn meniscus (right, plus a lot of ragged cartilage from earlier events), but noticed edema in my legs and started the ball rolling for that. That led to a bunch of tests, two fresh medications, both of which seem to be working. Only downside is that this is part of the state medical school, so like a lot of non-full doctors, she didn’t stay. There’s a steady flow of residents/nurses/CMAs and NPs. I’m not thrilled with my regular doc (the discussions/polite refusals for the COVID clotshot had a lot to do with that), so I don’t mind seeing the transients. Dr Mengele handles the coordination, so it works. Mostly.
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[sigh]
That’s as good as it gets for a lot of people.
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We probably need to remind ourselves that a lot of the long-lived ancestors did so with excellent home nursing. Most of my ancestors had exceptionally large families, with few dying young. That is a testament to good mothering, I think.
Doctors did not use to be used for minor injuries or illnesses. Only called in for the serious conditions. As they worked out of the patient’s home, hospital-caused infections used to be rare. True, any illness requiring an antibiotic – which were not then available – put the patient in grave danger. But, even without antibiotics, many survived. Keep in mind that too many antibiotics are used today, and that the outcome was skyrocketing allergies.
There are a few diseases where modern meds have made a huge difference:
One factor in childhood illnesses – not often discussed because it is a political hot button – is the role played by putting most children in daycare before they fully develop a strong immune system. Well over 1/2 of the immunization shots on the standard list are needed because of the possibility that those who haven’t developed good hygiene habits (not sticking their fingers into body parts, leaving their grimy little sticky prints on everything, sharing food and snot with friends) will pass on some truly nasty germs.
By the time most children have passed that point (5 years old), the risk is sharply reduced.
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Haven’t been seeing a lot of Nurse Practitioners, but have seen a lot of Physician Associates/Assistants. Doctors but are under the “supervision” of a doctor. These days since your doctor isn’t going to be the one operating on you, or even doing the follow up at the hospital, not a lot of difference in PA’s and MD’s. When our son was born, my obgyn would be there for delivery, and his pediatrician eventually baring complications, would see us at the hospital before we went home. As it turned out, while a pediatrician was in the delivery (operating) room, neither of our chosen ones were there (picked the wrong week to go into early labor). Or both the obgyn and pediatric of both offices had hospital privileges, same with doctors. Not true anymore, at least in our area.
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My knee procedure was done by a full doc with a PA assisting (she did the followup visit with PT recommendations). Anesthesia was by a CRNA, not a doc, though I gather they earn about $250K per year. Of the times I’ve had a general, what was one of the best. (OTOH, the bad ones were when I was in surgery for a couple of hours. Had a couple like that, but this knee one was more like 20-30 minutes.)
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My gynecologist did my hysterocemy. Or supervised while the resident did it, very likely, since I was a wonderfully simple case.
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Teh Leftroid Authoriteez are trying to reduce medicine — well, everything, really — to a rote process of following checklists. They believe that even the most complex tasks can be reduced to recipes so that a monkey could perform them. Except for their ‘Intellectual!’ conceits, of course. Those are reserved for the Anointed.
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Yep. This. So much this.
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I’m not sure it was a checklist, but part of Happy Fun Time before my knee got fixed, the CT scan showed a lump on an adrenal gland. 1/4th the size of “we gotta cut it now”, but it could be a) cancerous, b) screw up myriad endocrine functions, or c) do nothing.
To determine which, I had multiple tests beyond the CT (both with funky contrast solution and without). Plus a repeat of one with a different dose of the trigger drug. Whee.
Got the blood test Monday, and the last of the results showed up today. I looked it up and it’s dependent on ratios of stuff. Got a call from the doc’s assistant: Option C. Yippie!
Nicest piece of medical news in months.
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Make it two months. Got the knee fixed 7/17 and it’s more-or-less painfree. It’s nice not needing a cane. Have a modest collection, now unused. Second Yippie!
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C4C, because I can’t think of anything humorous and/or intelligent. [Wink]
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c4c
Same reason.
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I see nothing funny about the state of our wildly expensive medical care!!!
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Or lack of doctors. Especially if one is on, Medicare/Medicare Advantage. Warning: Make sure you have a primary when you sign up. Getting one, or changing to a different one probably not happening. Suddenly the clinic isn’t taking new patients. Plus getting in to see, anyone, is not days, not weeks, but months out. Anything urgent? Go to Urgent Care. Also, we are paying an annual fee for our private Dentist practice. We get to continue to see the same hygienist every six months. We get to pick our dentist (okay, only one for procedures as Sr is semi-retired, after his stroke. But we like Dr M, Jr.) We aren’t using our Advantage benefits because it requires one clinic, don’t get to choose hygienist or dentist, all of whom rotate in and then out (per rumors).
Thus didn’t have anything witty (not that I’m witty, ever) to say.
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Be sure to contact your agent to select a better plan come October 10 – December 7. Unless you are in a very small town in a rural region, there are alternatives.
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It isn’t the plan. It is the doctors/clinics. There are 3 major plans used in our area. Does not matter which one you are on. Oh there are minor differences in copays, out of pocket, monthly cost, and clinic networks (ours network is Peace Health, which is pretty much everything in the Willamette Valley). We’ve been with Regence Medicare Advantage for 3 years, now. But we’ve been with Regence through hubby’s work for decades. It is familiar. Mom and sisters and BIL’s are using United Health. BIL and SIL use Kaiser. They are all the same.
Oh, we’ll definitely give our agent a call for a review, given the rumors of changes, again. But they will all change the same.
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I have the rural tshirt, and bog-standard Medicare with Regence for Medigap. I’m out of pocket for dental and basic vision, but the retina issues have been covered since I was eligible for M’care. Injuries have been covered, with little out of pocket. (Barring travel for when the doc is in another town.)
I’ve been with the same dentist for years, and always see the same hygienist out of a pool of a few in the practice. The practice has a lot of uninsured patients and tries to keep the costs reasonable. Waggles hand.
With the knee and unrelated other issues that turned up, about half of the delay in getting to the surgery was worry about other medical conditions that presented in the visit and subsequent tests. Also, it turns out I’m not allowed to get an MRI (tiny but non-zero chance of a magnetic implant in my ear) and that screwed up the schedule and made diagnosis harder. Once I got the ortho referral, had to wait 6 weeks for the surgeon’s availability on a non-critical injury.
Side note: when I had the major knee injury in ’21, I saw the surgeon for pre-op 5 days after the injury (avoid Saturday injuries), and was in the OR 5 days later. Might have been sooner, but I had to stop Warfarin and 4 days is a minimum. Now the preferred protocol is to stop a full week before a procedure. Done it several times now, though it’s a bit spooky. I ask my heart to refrain from throwing a clot…
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I actually get vision (medical because of glaucoma, oh joy), and glasses (bonus, can now afford prescription sunglasses, which we pay for, but at least Regence (Advantage) medi-gap pays for most the regular ones. Dental, technically we have it, but been going to this clinic, before married, then after we came back almost 40 years ago. Alternative conglomerate dental that Regence pays for, it is a rotation of dentists, and hygienists, none who stay for long, no thanks. Sure we have a new dentist now, but that is because Dr. N had a stroke. I like Dr. R, besides he is Dr. N’s, son.
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$SPOUSE tried one of the national chains. Awful with lots of turnover and much upselling pressure. It’s been over 16 years for my dentist. Practice was a father/daughter (DMD/DDS) but Dad retired and a “new” DMD is a partner. 12+ years, so not so new. I’ve been with the same hygienist from the start. Doesn’t hurt that her treatment room has a world class vista of Mount Shasta.
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Have you read some of the comments on here? :-P
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There’s a post on X that’s been getting a lot of attention, and snarky responses, over the last couple of days. A woman whose name I don’t recognize put up a somewhat long (for X) comment stating that if men are having mental health issues, then they should…
And she proceeded to rattle off a list of suggestions ranging from therapy to safe spaces.
There have been a number of responses showing up in my feed mocking one item or another in her list, and explaining why it’s bad in this instance. But in particular, respondents have been pointing out that you literally cannot have safe spaces for men these days. They used to exist. But for the last couple of decades, attempting to declare a place “Men Only” is one of the sure-fire ways to attract a multitude of lawsuits.
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Men having mental health issues? No-one gives a shit about men‘s mental health!
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Breathing and a pulse should also be requirements. Awareness of surroundings a plus.
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Oh, yeah, breathing and more or less aware too.
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[turns beady eye toward Imaginos1892]
You know that’s ableism, right? [shuffles papers] Maybe a short visit to a Happy Fun Camp is in order.
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What isn’t?
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“You can’t call them Brain Eating Zombies! They are partially ambulatory formerly-living persons with specific dietary preferences and a limited vocabulary.”
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Politicians
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HezBooma now has exploding radios, to go with whatever is left of their pagers.
Nicely done, whomever….
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I would have thought it a bad idea to pick a fight with a group/class/national identity whose average IQ is well above the established norm and who have racked up Nobel prizes in science and medicine at rates well above and beyond those picking the fight…
Piss them off, they can get very creative. This is probably my white and Western privilege speaking, though.
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Not only that, Jews have got to be the toughest people in the world. One group after another has been trying to wipe them out for the last 4,000 years.
The Jews are still here. Most of the groups that tried to wipe them out are literally history.
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I wonder if it’s not that think western civilization’s roof will stay up if they remove the walls so much as they think that what they replace the walls with will be superior. Because of their superior intellects, dontcha know.
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Some. But they think the basics will remain.
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They don’t know what holds the roof up, so they can’t see any reason not to knock out this wall. If the wall was put up by a dead white guy, they figure it needs to be knocked out just for that.
Back in the 1990s, a guy bought the house next door to mine as a fixer-upper. The previous owner had removed one of the supporting teleposts in the basement, because it interrupted the nice open space he wanted for a rec room. When I saw the inside of the house, the centre of the basement ceiling had already sagged a couple of inches and Every. Single. Right. Angle in the kitchen directly above it was visibly out of true.
To make matters worse, the house had a nearly flat tar-and-gravel roof, in a snowy climate, and there was a trunk railway line right across the street. One heavy snowfall on that roof, and the next freight train could have caused the entire house to implode.
If people are that stupid about literal supports for literal roofs where they can see what makes them work, there can be no limit to their stupidity about complex systems whose parts they cannot see.
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No kidding. All I can say regarding systems I’ve worked on is: “Not my businesses. Not anymore.”
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I have a pyramidal roof with the chimney just off the center. I wanted to remove a wall. I was fairly certain that roofs that slope in from all sides have no structural walls beneath them. I hired a structural engineer to take a look – just to be sure.
I was mostly right (depends on the size of the roof), but who wants their house to implode based on little more than a guess?
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The place where I work, or rather Corporate for it, now wants us to treat nonstick pizza pans like cast iron pans.
This does not work. It does not work in so many ways. (For example, if you try to season a nonstick pan of the brand we have, it puts out toxic fumes.)
So basically, nobody is doing it that way, but we have to pretend like we are. Especially when Corporate sends somebody to check on us.
We are also now not supposed to use knives or scissors, in either the kitchen or the bakery.
Again, there is literally no way to do our jobs without knives or scissors, so we have to pretend, and hide our contraband.
I resent this.
Meanwhile, we are allowed to have boxcutters all day and night, which implements are a lot more dangerous.
Nothing makes sense; but somebody at Corporate is wasting everybody’s time and affecting our safety, and customer safety.
This is only slightly worse when they made storage more “ergonomic,” by designing procedures to hurt all people’s backs and knees, no matter whether you were short or tall. So we had to reorganize everything, and then reorganize it back, a few weeks later.
I know that sanity in the official procedures will return after a few months (and possibly lawsuits), but why don’t they just skip the dumb part instead?
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A few years ago a Pennsic friend of ours was tasked with writing up a safety procedure for using scissors. Our response: “What were they thinking ?”
He wrote up a policy which required employees to skip down the halls, holding their scissors in front of them while singing, “The Scissors Safety Song.”
It got all the way to Corporate. Who passed it. Looks like nobody actually read the thing during the “review,” process.
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I worked for a timber company, in the office. The company had to have safety protocols for everything. Books for the chemicals both for shop and field applications. Equipment lockout procedures. There were even lock out procedures for working on desktop computer internals. Where to stand around logging equipment when it was in use. Monthly safety meetings. All the safety requirements tailored for the region. Paid off the winter a logging tower came down, unplanned. Happened the day of the annual regional safety dinner. Made a long, long, long, day for the timber regional engineer. A lot shorter day than it could have been. No one went to the morgue, no one went to the hospital, or even a doctor. Scared the hell out of everyone there, and a few who weren’t there. But not a single bruise, caused by the tower, attachments, or even the cables. Everyone was where they were suppose to be, when they were suppose to be there. I never learned why the tower came down, no need. I am sure the reason was sussed out.
With coding, at least the type I did, I could get away with “hmm. That didn’t go as planned.” Track it down and fix it, with no worries of myself or someone else getting hurt or killed. Around logging equipment? That is not an option.
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I started in semiconductors as a process engineer in ’74. One of the techs had an impressive set of scars from when a glass bottle of sulfuric acid broke and she slipped in it. Some time after that, soft rubber buckets (close fitting with a sturdy handle) got required, so that was the last.
Ventilation in the photomask area was designed to keep the wafers clean, but the chemical fumes went everywhere else. (OTOH, there wasn’t quite the illegal drug problem in that line, since the workers were usually high from the solvents. I kid. Mostly. Actually a lot of potheads in that fab. Our quality numbers showed it, too. Redacted Semiconductor Company is long gone. Thank the Lord!)
Things got a lot better over the years. It was possible for a fab worker to get injured, but much harder than before. Though I never learned how the maintenance tech got a snootful of arsine gas. (Chelation treatment fixed that, but yikes! That was in the mid-80s, and procedures/equipment got a lot better later on.)
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Someone seriously wrote that you can’t use knives in a kitchen? (I am assuming “kitchen” from the pizza pan mention.)
I mean, I wish I could say I was surprised.
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OSHA is just as bad for construction. And the EPA (FUCK THE EPA). The amount of stupid shit that just gets in the way of us doing our friggin’ jobs …..
AAAAAAAAGHDHGREJGWFKDV CJHLSVHKASJ>B
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The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter will return.
Soon.
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For the benefit of newcomers, our blog anthem:
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
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Been a while since we Kipled properly around here.
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Competence.
Seems like it can be feigned.
Before I started my BSN nursing program, I re-took Anatomy and Physiology, since the 30-years-earlier class didn’t have stuff right at my fingertips.
Great class; I really enjoyed it. Professor had a caution early on: don’t try to cheat. Imagine being a patient in a hospital, he said, and suspecting your caregiver (nurse/doctor) didn’t actually learn these important things.
Which does lead off into the credentialed vs educated discussion.
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Sometimes it’s the least worst person who applied.
Competence? We can’t find that.
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“What do you call the med. school student who only just barely passed?”
“Doctor.”
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Right. Class president of the group ahead of mine in nursing school told me “Even Cs get degrees!”
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Doctor Tim Conway?
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“Doctor” Jill.
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“…couldn’t have a bumbling policeman figure in a murder mystery because ‘they’re highly trained professionals’ ”
Apparently they never saw the highly-successful “Pink Panther”; Clouseau was the poster boy for “bumbling policeman”.
And almost every mystery I’ve read or seen, from Philip Marlowe to Sam Spade, makes the point that because non-policemen don’t have to follow normal police procedures, they can find out things when the police can’t.
We’re on our way to becoming a nation of incompetent, credentialed “experts” whose Prime Directives are “Don’t Rock The Boat” and “Genuflect To The Lawyers”.
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It may not be a new disease. When people talk about a less good Sayers novel, they often mean stuff like Five Red Herrings or Have His Carcase, both of which pad out the mystery by showing us the good little policemen doing their legwork at great length, when nobody cares about them. All I can figure is that she got scolded by some police or ex-police she consulted on technical matters and this was her apology.
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That’s correct, sort of, but it was Lord Peter who utilized things like entrapment (as in Strong Poison) to accomplish what the police couldn’t. Of course, he didn’t have to worry about budgets, either. The police (most of them, especially his BIL Parker) were presented as competent but restricted in what they could do (by policies and budget), sort of like Mike Hammer’s buddy Pat.
FWIW (and relevant to nothing in this thread) I like all of Sayers’ work, but my favorite Lord Peter novels are The Nine Tailors and Busman’s Honeymoon. The follow-ons by Jill Walsh are also pretty good, and follow Sayers’ model pretty well.
And that’s probably enough LitCrit for today…😉
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I have a couple of dead tree Sayers books. The book club edition of the Nine Tailors, and a paperback offered as swag for donating to the metro PBS station in the ’70s. (They did a lot of Lord Peter back then, though I can’t recall any of them. Sigh.) The paperback has the short stories, and are quite good.
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The Death of Competence is the one area in which we are uncomfortably and unassailably Roman Empire. On the plus side, it took them a long time to kill competence hard enough for the lack thereof to kill them, and maybe there’s some hope for us in that idea.
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People follow procedures because they don’t understand/can’t be trusted to actually know how to do things. That may be because they are needed to do a job right now and there isn’t time to teach them anything but procedures or it may be because their job must fit in with a lot of other jobs and standardization is essential for the whole thing to work.
Those are the valid justifications for S.O.P.s. Mostly though, procedures work, for a while anyway, for those who are too intellectually lazy to try to understand why things are done in one way or another.
Or maybe they just never thought of doing it any other way.
At one time, new employees of one of the old ‘Seven Sisters’ oil companies were given two trash baskets when they came to work in the Midland Texas office. This particular company was known in the Industry for obsessive secrecy, so when they asked what the second trash basket was for and were told that it was company policy to cover their phones when they were out of their office- they accepted it.
Finally, when someone from the headquarters visited the Midland office and saw the upside down trash cans on the desks over the phones, the procedures were changed from ‘cover your phone’ to ‘have someone answer your phone’.
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The idea is to get people habituated to following rules and procedures, no matter how absurd, so that said people can be controlled by a small ruling elite. It is part and parcel of what the left in the USA has been trying to impose since Wilson, with his desire for rule by a small cadre of “experts”, with that small elite dictating every aspect of people’s lives.
They have been trying to infect culture with this mentality for over a century, to the point where the arts, certainly literature, television and movies, embody it and anything that criticizes it or doesn’t incorporate it is harshly punished by the establishment. It is part and parcel of the people pushing it themselves being believers in said culture, and having made it impossible for them to think outside the bake. Thus you get dozens of police procedurals on TV that are in essence all the same show, with multiple CSIs, Law & Orders, etc., but ALL of them, the exact same show.
The goal is to have everyone think the same, so that there will be no thoughtcrime (the NPC memes are dead on accurate).
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“We see show X is attracting viewers. We’re too lazy to come out with our own show, so we want to copy X, except different enough we can’t be sued for plagiarism.”
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Then there’s the franchise. CSI (Las Vegas). CSI-NY, CSI-Miami.
NCIS. NCIS-Norleans, NCIS-Hawaii. If there’s more, I long since stopped watching.
OTOH, the mini-season of CSI with many of the original characters was worth watching. On the gripping hand, we gave up on broadcast TV shows when that ended. $SPOUSE watches classic game shows on Buzzer, and Kat-the-Dog is hooked on Househunters.
All three of us will watch DVDs. Starting in imported Vera shows, and late Midsomer Murders.
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Like book fads. “We want something fresh, and original, that’s just like [actual original idea bestseller]! With cover art that’s a nod to that one, too.” See also: Twilight clones. Try not to look too hard at the Fifty Shades wanna-bees.
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And with our hobby horses
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“And we’ll also adapt it for a modern audience.”
Translation: Load it to the gills with DEI.
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Yep.
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There is a segment of the population that values being in the group far more than truth. It is the origin of the “would you rather be happy or right?” dogma.
They are real people. I’ve dealt with them. I don’t know how much of the population is made up of them; we tend to self-select into separate groups because out mindsets are not very compatible. But they are real.
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Probably fits in the 10-80-10 pattern.
The version I usually use: in any emergency, 10% of people will react and do what needs to be done. 80% will wait to be told what to do. 10% will panic, get in the way, or otherwise obstruct the doers.
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Babylon Bee for the win!
https://babylonbee.com/news/rashida-tlaib-uninjured-after-her-pager-mysteriously-explodes
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Too bad not real. (She wasn’t hurt. Nor was her staff.) It would forever expose her as the traitor that she is.
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Sounds like you think that would make some sort of difference, when none of the previous treason did.
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Did I forget the /sarcasm tag again?
Bad me.
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Take a look at Angel Studios subscriptions – I’m riveted by one of the series, The Shift, and plan to watch the movies, once I finish my annual license reaccreditation.
I even put some money into investment into Angel. Not that expensive, and if it takes off, Whoopie!
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Competence?
Wrapping pager lithium batteries in 20 grams of PETN, then arranging a remote-controlled battery overheat.
Priceless. Oh Bravo, Mossad. Hope they called it “Operation Sopranos”.
“…as if thousands of voices cried out in terror, then suddenly jumped up two octaves…”
(kzin grin, followed by bellowing laughter)
Oh, -epic- burn.
And all Mossad has to do to brown their enemy’s shorts again is text “Shalom!”
I think I shall pass out sweets at work tomorrow. Oh yes, indeed…..
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I saw the video clip of one. Takes a heart of stone not to laugh my ass off.
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Was it the wanker in the grocer? I smiled when I saw that. It was a happy, but not nice, smile.
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I find the videos addictive.
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Yes. And note the US currency flying out of his manpurse. The Dollah ain’t dead yet!
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I saw (somewhere on the net) that by tracking the medical calls and hospital visits, Mossad now can put together a good picture of the terrorist structure, and for the survivors, who to target next.
I saw that the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon was also injured in the ‘splody incident. LOL
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The word is hezzy IT folks finally convinced their ptb that cell phones were not securable, so they switched everyone to pagers for “work” comms. Not only are pagers listen-only, they don’t even generate a locatable reply signal.
So they placed a large block order, and their buyers made sure to shop around and get the best price.
But Mossad stays well plugged in to commercial activity in Lebanon, so they got wind of the shipment, and the rest is splodey history.
So as usual it’s all ITs fault.
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🤣🤣🤣
Truth!
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I saw That Blogger’s take. Going after a terrorist organization is terrorism? Wow!
I think I need to update my bookmarks.
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Yeah, and defending yourself from genocide is genocide. :-(
The lot of ’em can all take a hearty GFY.
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Yeah, I have no need to read any more of his effluvia.
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I loved some of the early reports: “A signal was sent that caused the batteries to overheat and explode.”
Yeah, now explain exactly how a signal can do that, Sparky. Pagers preloaded with explosives and remote detonators, and distributed? Check.
Signals that mysteriously directly “talk” to the batteries and order them to overheat and instantly explode? Pull the other one; it plays “He’s a Fed”.
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Yeah, it’s definitely the explosives. The brand of pagers involved use regular alkaline batteries, which are too dumb to talk to anyone or anything.
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And now we’re seeing reports that the pagers in question were equipped with alkaline batteries, not lithium. Apparently Hezbollah has been deliberately dropping back a generation on tech because the Israelis are good at hacking the latest.
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The basic driver for this is that what we did with the cell system in Iraq is leaking out in the region.
Jumping back a generation is their first response to not wanting everything they say or send listened to and messed with en route.
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So how can we encourage them to ditch their AK-47s for smoothbore matchlocks?😁
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Forget it, Bob. It’s j-skool-town.
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Yeah, I know: “Buy ’em their books; send ’em to school; they eat the teacher.” Still gotta try.
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I wonder how many UN and NGO employees are suddenly indisposed?
AP stringers? Reuters? US State Department?
Be an interesting set of number I’d suppose.
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I was a computer programmer for decades, and back in the ’80s/’90s a lot of companies wanted to get ISO (International Standards Organization) qualified (e.g., ISO 9000) to improve quality. I went through the training and setup for that, and later for SEI (Software Engineering Institute) qualifications (the same thing, basically, for software development).
I quickly learned that these quality standards were simply defining a process and then religiously following it. The process didn’t have to do anything, or improve anything. If you had a process and followed it, you could get ISO or SEI certified, even if your process produced only crap. The quality standard wasn’t about quality, it was about process following. So ever since, I’ve taken things like “ISO-9000 quality” with a very large grain of salt.
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Because that is not what ISO-9000 is for.
ISO-9000 is the replication harness for lifting a product out of one location and moving it’s production to another location.
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But the typical use case for ISO-9000 in corporate environments was pure cargo cult. ‘Successful organizations use ISO-9000. So if we label everything on the premises and write an explicit procedure for every situation, we will be a successful organization too!’
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There was some of that, but there was also quite a bit of, “We live mainly on government contracts, and the new rules require us to be ISO-9000 compliant to bid on any new ones.” That was the situation at [Giant Defense Contractor] where I worked. And no, exceptions were not forthcoming. It was a clusterfark for several months (maybe a couple of years; it’s been a while).
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$SPOUSE was doing ISO-9000 stuff for Defunct Semiconductor Company prior to Y2K. The process might have been well documented, but it doesn’t mean that DSC was going to produce what people really were willing to buy. I had first hand experience with them 20+ years beforehand (a couple of years well worth forgetting), and the culture was etched in place for decades.
They could have taught Boeing how to screw up. (Wonder if they did?)
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The point has been made by several here that all ISO-9000 does is require that compliant companies have mandatory written procedures and follow them. If the procedures are garbage? Not covered.
And Boeing is an ISO-9000-compliant company, so…
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ISO is a scam to transfer your money to the auditing group as often and for as long as possible.
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Yep – it’s the ISO Auditor Full Employment Act.
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OK, I probably got the ISO spec number wrong. I don’t remember which particular ISO certification we were working towards, 30 years ago. The gist of my comments stands, though – if you generated a process to produce broken devices and followed that process, you’d qualify for certification. Management pushed it as a quality process, but it had nothing to do with actual product quality. Its only purpose was to give button-counters something to do, even if it got in the way of producing good-quality stuff.
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Ayup. I saw a successful implementation of good specs –> leading to good processes –> leading to good product –> leading to the division bosses closing the fab and moving it to elsewhere in the country –> leading to their bosses selling off the business. (Different company from DSC. We made good stuff, but Taiwan fabs could make it cheaper. Maybe as good. Dunno.)
We mostly avoided ISO-9000.
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Our ISO consultant in Texas had almost as low a respect for the ISO standards as I. Me – “ISO is useless. If you document making defects you still pass ISO and are certified for making 90% garbage.” him – “Basically”, and his qualifier was “But it pays my bills, so there is that.”
I used to read two tech mags for Auto Racing (Racetech and Race Car Engineering this was in the ’90s and early aughts) and over time everyone harped on getting ISO Certs then it became “You know, ISO Certs are really a waste of our time.” over a 3 or 4 year period. F1 teams went from bragging about getting the highest and latest ISO rating to not giving a flip.
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ISO-9000 _can_ work, but you need people dedicated to making it work. Part of the process is process improvement. However, people with those skills could just as well make anything work.
I’m very much of two minds on process compliance. On the one hand, it is immensely useful for bringing large numbers of new people up-to-speed. On the other, it stifles creativity and results in a lot of round pegs being forced into square holes (because no one can be bothered with the process improvement process).
A recent example: I needed to get a zoning variance for my deck. There is a checklist of things one must supply. I supplied them and went back-and-forth with the clerks at the permit/variance office until they were happy with everything to be presented to the zoning board. As requested, I showed up at the meeting. They cranked through these things! The clerks I worked with did the presentations (I had no clue that would happen). Process-wise, all the variances were exactly the same. As a zoning board member, that’s a YUGE time-saver as opposed to having each applicant present things in whatever format and order they happen to decide upon.
Of course, one can argue that it’s my property and I shouldn’t need zoning variances in the first place.
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Zoning laws should only be those for safety, and that affect your immediate neighbors, and not visual ones. Narrow streets? No parking on the street, including visitors. But zoning shouldn’t be able to tell you what can’t be parked in your front yard, no matter how unsightly or messy, or how busy (home business). Shouldn’t be able to say what to paint your house. What your yard should be, grass, trees (neighbor can deal with shading), or wild flowers (weeds), except for fire suppression. Etc.
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Given I started the medical thread, it looks like I have a bone spur in my neck. Not sure what,if anything, can be done. But I’ll take that over cancer any day.
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That sounds like a situation afflicting one of the ladies at my mail drop. She started with hip problems (unrelated), but had something wrong in the neck spinal region, affecting arms and hands. Local sawbones wanted to wait (PT for upper body was already a failure), but she was getting progressively worse. Before said problems went to the diaphragm, she switched surgeons and went to a better hospital for the procedure. She’s off work, but feeling is returning to her hands (gradually; nerve damage when recoverable is kind of slow*). Hip fixes for later.
Take heart and find a good spinal surgeon, should be fixable.
((*)) I had a damaged nerve when one of the retina procedures was done 6 years ago. Pupil was paralyzed, but over a couple of years (sigh), most of the function returned. Still not completely healed, don’t expect it. I warn EMTs that I’ll still fail the PEAR test, though not as badly as I was postop. I just need to stay out of situations where the test is important. (Pupils Equal And Reactive. Sucks when right pupil is larger than left and/or slow to react.)
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Hubby will fail the PEAR protocol in his left eye. Pupil is fixed, with a tear in it. Drives him nuts in bright sun. At best he can see gray haze, and movement. Age 4, childhood accident from climbing chain link fence. An ophthalmologist, even mid-80s, could have gone in and repaired it. Tests showed the back of the eye was never damaged. But what damage there was meant he never learned to see properly with that eye. About the only difference between then and now, is then too high of a risk of sympathetic rejection with the other eye, causing total blindness. Too much to risk back then. Now? The sympathetic reaction might be majorly reduced. Hubby still won’t risk it.
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yes. much better than cancer. But… I’m sorry.
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It is, and I am too.
Hang in there.
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everyone in Econ land is focused on whether the FRB will cut interest rates, well fed funds rate, by 25, 50, 75bp, hell why not cut 550 bp to zero? The thing is, the FRB has no idea at all what interest rates should be, how could they? If they did they wouldn’t be working for a government salary. Further, the market takes no notice of the Fed funds rate anyway, only banks can borrow at that rate. The whole thing is a grift.
The funny thing, to me, is that there is ample evidence for the Fed following the markets and not for the markets following the Fed. I can show you the data. No academic paper acknowledges this because academic careers in monetary economics are in the gift of the Fed. You really have to have interned at the Fed to get anywhere in the field and no one will dare cross them. You have to be stupid or complicit to get ahead.
so why doth incompetence flourish? because now that incompetence has flourished, none dare call it incompetence.
I suspect this is true almost everywhere and certainly wherever HR harridans are found. That’s why they hate Musk so much, he gives the lie to their failure.
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COurt clerics who’s job it is to tell the king how much god approves of his latest terrible idea.
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And how attractive his new raiment is.
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In ordinary countries, central banks do indeed set their discount rates based on real-world criteria. Usually the rates are calculated to keep inflation low but not absent, and keep the currency trading at a stable-ish exchange rate vis-à-vis the country’s major trading partners.
Then along comes some idiot with a plan to blow the whole economy to smithereens with suicidal fiscal policy, and the central bank has to figure out how to handle a situation right outside the bounds of monetary theory. And then you get, and are getting, chaos.
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central banks are the problem. Government overspending doesn’t exist without debauching the currency and its central banks that do that. Abolish them all.
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THIS^^^
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I think you mean debasing the currency. Trying to imagine what currency debauchery would be like makes my brain hurt. :-P
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Lenin said debauching, or at least the Russian equivalent. Keynes then picked it up and popularized it in English. I think it’s quite precise — from the French débaucher to seduce, entice, or lead astray. Sorry for the image, but all you have to do is buy a loaf of bread and it goes from imagination to reality.
50 bp cut with stocks and housing at all time highs. Ho hum, there’s still 500bp to go and I suspect we’ll go,all the way down before it’s done.
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Governments were debasing and debauching their currencies for thousands of years before central banks were invented. Alyattes, the second-last king of Lydia, was the first ruler in the world to issue coins. He made the coins of electrum, and made a fortune for himself by playing games with the ratio of gold to silver in the alloy.
If you want to solve that problem, you have to outlaw currency and/or government. Central banks are not the problem.
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But they certainly make mass shenanigans easier!
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The Russian central bank has been pretty amazing. Apparently, Elvira Nabiullina (the head of it) has tried to resign several times because the job is impossible. Her resignation has not been accepted.
I imagine that she and her family stay well clear of tall buildings.
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I’ve spent the time since this was posted trying to not delve into #rant-warning-bad-werds territory due to new stupidity at work and failed. just know I am with you here.
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Do Tell?????
😉🤣🤣🤣
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hard to go into without exposing company details or falling into profane language. band-aids on duct tape with some folks deciding we need to be the “Model Line” wtf. me – “Model for how NOT to do it.”
Labor rates of 8 an hour when if you do it as they think it should be done, you get 3-4, and after bringing that to nearly 7/hr they say nope, can’t do that and give an alternate that is more work and more likely to cause repetitive injury.
Plus make signs and label everything so anyone who isn’t doing the work knows what is what and what it is used for (what do you mean the signs are in the way and eat time moving. You gotta leave them there so our photos look spiffy.
We have multiple for lifts that run in and out of the building. Part of shipping for the company is in here and stuff runs from other buildings, year-round, in Wisconsin.
So one knob the other day looked at the epoxied floor and said “Why is the floor so marked up?” (this just after it being cleaned, and as it is not designed for easy cleaning was a chore getting the water to the drains) “I want the floor to look like it is new at all times.” Fine, you get it that way and move all manufacturing our of the building so you can come admire it and run a polisher over it. By the by we are not allowed to have more than a vacuum “Zamboni” for cleaning, water scrubbers not allowed.
We are being told how to manufacture items some of use have been making for near 20 years by people who’ve never worked outside an cubical.
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Oh. Sounds like what happened (mentioned this before, but bears repeating) because someone clicked on something they shouldn’t have and installed it, infecting the entire network. Since that someone was an high executive in the palace corner (small-ish company), the resulting:
“Cannot install anything on work desktops unless someone from IT oversees the process.”
“Um okaaaaaay,” said R&D software engineering, “You know repeated installations is kind of what we do? Right?” (Called compiling. But 100% was stopped by the process.)
“No problem,” said IT, “just call us and we’ll send someone down to unlock your workstation!” Said IT.
“You really, really, do not understand” said R&D.
“It must be this way.” Said IT.
“Okay.” Said collective R&D
R&D “Huddle up engineers. What is everyone’s compiling schedule?”
Hardware Engineers: “Couple times a day.”
Software tool Engineers: “Every 5 to 30 minutes, max?” (Seriously, don’t know how the one other software tool engineer worked her tools, but I work incrementally. If something goes wrong with the compile, or mini test, I know 95% of the time it is in the small increments added or tracked down.) We took turns calling in to have machines unlocked. Waited just long enough for them to get back to their office.
R&D had an exception before the ink on the policy was even dry.
Got even better after the company was bought out. With one addition. Same policy imposed by the purchasing company IT. Only this time the old company IT, being surplus furloughed, told the new IT department “Exempt R&D. Do not lock R&D!” See above round robin back and forth. Except one little difference. This time, IT was across town. This time we took a little more flack because we were “doing this on purpose”. I mean, not wrong, but not correct either. It was our jobs to create LIB, DLL, EXE. (In my case it was one LIB, one EXE, and 10 DLL’s). Compiling repeatably, every day, was what happened.
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I have this exact problem at work. My boss is soooo wedded to the ‘process’ that it doesn’t matter to her if the results are garbage, as long as we followed the ‘process’. And if we can’t get anything done, or fix the latest dumpster fire, or smoothly create the latest new feature that they’ve already sold to a dozen clients before we even started developing it, well, it must be because we didn’t follow the ‘process’ hard enough or closely enough.
It’s hair-tearingly frustrating, not least because I’m not allowed to just tell her that the problem is the ‘process’ we’re following. Arbitrary deadlines, suggested by ‘experts’, ridiculous estimation demands…. I wish they’re just let us work the issue until it was done without all the hoop jumping that just adds to the timeline and makes it harder to actually accomplish anything.
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So much this.
Marketing: “When do you think you can have these specifications done?”
Me: “18 months, which includes final testing.”
Marketing: “No! Needed 8 months for XYZ conference.”
Me: Thinking. “Well, then you can have only these features!”
Marketing: Throwing tantrum (seriously, did) “No! Need everything on the list! We’ll agree to be done (insert date).”
Six weeks from (insert date), Marketing: “Is it close?”
Me: Laugh (okay, laughing probably not recommended). “No.”
Marketing: “What? We AGREED!”
Me: “No, you agreed! I said another 10 months. I am a bit ahead, so 8 months.”
Cue tantrum.
It is a joy to work this way. My last job was this way. Rarely had any deadline, if there was, we were asked “how long”. That is what went off of. Was fewer hours quoted and billed sometimes? Yes. Often expressed as: total hours, x hours billed, x hours support, even if total hours was less than estimated by the programmer. Programmer still had the hours needed to get it done. No specific delivery date was promised. Were there times we had to drop what we were doing and quickly fix/change something? Yes: If boss was onsite training. If auditors (state or feds) were onsite. If reports were due for payroll (although calling at 4:45 PM when due at 5 PM was a good way to not get it done. Especially if one or two clients, because every single time it was their lack of due diligence, you know, actually looking at the pre reports before generating. My last few months I refused to answer the phone after 4 PM, especially on Fridays. Worse for clients, the phone system, by then, had caller id.
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Yep. I am hopeless at estimating how long jobs will take. No matter how I try to pad and fudge, it’s always waaay off. The only honest answers I can give are:
“I will work on it until it’s done.”
and
“It will take as long as it takes.”
But Teh Professional Managers want exact schedules for things that have never been done before. Or they demand 3 years experience with a tool that didn’t exist 6 months ago.
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You saw that too?
I got pretty good with WAG’s with the tool of the time, based off what I’d done in the past, with that tool … then x3 or x4 that WAG for a SWAG, depending if I’d actually done what needed to be done. One release actually made, and beat, Marketing’s date. Yea surprised the heck out of me too. But part of that time was doing the code restructuring that I’d been stating that had to be done. Told them they could give me six months to do that and then six months to do the changes, which was inline with the physical hardware availability for testing. Or give me 2 years for 3/4 of the changes and the other 1/4 was not doable. Only took me 2 months to do the tear apart and restructure, a week to do the 1/4 otherwise not doable (okay took couple of weeks to dig out the buried C++ undocumented functions I needed that had to be there, somewhere). Then too I wasn’t coding anything “new”. Using it differently, maybe, not new. Using Visual Basic (not .net, too soon) and with restructuring, C++, still not new.
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One of the things I have noticed in my life of 68 years is that quite often the most significant things in a persons life are often unintended consequences … by that I mean that the “rules” say you have to have a life plan … but while following a plan opportunities popup that you follow … and quite often it was those side tracks to the plan that turn out to be significant things in your life … but they can be misserd if you stick to the “rules” and “follow the plan” …
So I say have a plan but keep your head on a swivel and watch for opportunities …
(lots of boring details below so feel free to skip :) )
My “plan” was … join the Navy at 17 in the Navy Nuclear Power program, get the Navy to send me to college via the Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program and then make a carrer in the Navy (following in the footsteps of my grandfather and great grandfather) ….
So enlisted in Navy, got thru boot camp and was assigned to my first ship before attending nuke power school (to learn to operate nuke power plants) …. then the Navy canceled the Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program … hmmm … still wanted a college degree so I applied to the US Naval Academy … Navy said thanks for the enthusiam but your grades in high school where not great (yeah didn’t give it maximum effort) BUUUUT we can send you to the Naval Academy Preparatory School to tune up your academic abilities … had never even heard of the place but figured why not …
At NAPS I figured I needed to pick a sport that I could have a chance of making if I made it to the Academy, looked around … football (too small), basketball (too short), tennis (not good enough) … but the prep school had a Squash team … never heard of, seen or played squash but figured nobody else had either so picked Squash … our “coach” had never played squash either but wanted to learn himslef thus volunteered to be the coach … Of the 10 guys trying out for the team exactly one of us had ever been in a squash court … was a fun year of learning …
A year later 265 of us NAPsters got into US Naval Academy … tried out for the squash team and amazingly made the roster (yes I was the 10th man on an 11 man team of which only the top 9 played in matches) … by the end of the year I was number 6 on the roster and was the first Freshman at the Naval Academy to ever play on the varsity squash team …
After graduation was assigned to several ships and my last “job” was the division assigned to maintaining all the electronics on the ship … radios, radars and the Sperry Inivac computer which got me interested in computers (first was a Commodore 64 that I had on the ship, used it for inventorying our Top Secret documents, another one of my jobs).
So left the Navy in 1980 (decided a career might not be as glamorous as I had thought) and managed to get a job interview on Wall Street. Got the interview because a friend of mine ran a limo service and his main client was the CEO of Pru Bache securities and this client was complaining that he could find a good squash opponent. He suggested I might give him a good game and after several matches the CEO asked me what I was looking to do. Told him I was trying to get into Wall Street and he hooked me up with an interview for a basic entry level position on their Government Bond trading desk. The first guy I interviewed with was ex Navy helicopter pilot and the second guy was a ex Coast Guard officer so I was a shoe in.
Worked the desk as a simple assistant, nothing fancy just helping the traders manage their tickets … buuuuut … after 6 months was an assistant trader actually trading my own book when the Manager of the desk approached me and said they they wanted to build a position and ticketing system (everything was done on paper up til that point) and becasue I had “experience” with computers in the Navy (ha ha … my guys fixed the Sperry Univac, I just watched) he “volunteered me to work with the technology team to design and build out a position and ticketing system on the mainframe. My first taste of being a business analyst and I’ve been doing that at various Wall Street firms since 1987 …
So the moral of the story is I started out with a plan, had to adjust it early on, ended up learning squash which got me my first job on Wall Street, which got me involved in technology which led me to the career I have enjoyed for 35+ years …
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FWIW, that sounds like a somewhat more complicated than most, but not much more complicated, career such as many self-starters have; have a plan, but grab opportunities when they appear and ride them until a better opportunity surfaces.
It’s a maxim that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy; that applies to any plan’s contact with reality.😉 Being flexible, competent and willing to learn are the keys to success.
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From my background, I tend to see process-bound actors not so much as button counters as button *pushers*. I have seen too many systems ‘operators’ stuck in the, “Press button A. When light L changes from red to green, engage switch S . . .” mode with no understanding of <b>why</b> they do what they do.
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And when something happens which isn’t specifically covered by the “process” they tend to either lock up or freak out.
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