When we left our fearless hero (dat's me) last week, he was anxiously awaiting for his database password to propagate to all the servers out in TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) Server Land. That was so I could get back to CTF (Crawl to Failure). For those of you who came in late, I covered CTF here. For those who don't want to follow that link back, let's do a quick review of how corporate America works.
When companies get in trouble, there are three actions they usually take:
1. Lay off employees. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of layoffs! (With apologies to Shakespeare) Anyway here at TCIDNN we call layoffs skill rebalancing. As in we're skill rebalancing you right out the door. Here's your cardboard box. See ya.
2. Reengineer processes. Not to be confused with skill rebalancing, tho' sometimes reengineering processes does lead to skill rebalancing. Most of the time, tho', it leads to a FQP (Quality Program). And, of course management always swears that this is not AFQP (Another Quality Program). We were only kidding with the all the other FQP's. This time we really mean it. Honest.
2. An employee competency program. After all it's always the employees' fault. We managers are doing everything right. It's those pesky employees. I know, let's waste some money and reeducate them. And from that, we get CTF.
Anyway, on Friday, I'm chomping at the bit to get started on module three of CTF. It's taken me a week to get the authorization, download a local copy of the database, and get a password to access the database out on the server. So I go on out to the server and after I access it the first thing I read is 'You don't need a special password to access the database. Your company intranet password will work.' Huh? Hey, thanks for sharing that valuable info with me three days ago! I could use some choice words about now, but my office mate said if I don't clean up my language he was gonna quit reading my blogs. He mainly gets pissed off when I say f***, so I'll do my best not to say f*** too often. So, I was glowering at my terminal and I was patiently saying 'This shit really pisses me the f*** off!'
I calm down and access the database. As part of the instructions I received when I was given authorization to the database, I click on Education. Then I start clicking on things that expand to other things to click on until I get to click on something that intiates a popup window to view, launch, or detach. I dutifully click on launch and sit back and am immediately stunned.
A multimedia presentation starts up. Someone is saying something and on the screen are circles with spokes emanating from them. On the spokes are other circles. And they're spinning. I am really impressed! Then the spinning circle-spoke-circle spinning things are replaced by a bunch of squares and there are lines connecting the squares but they are in no discernable pattern. I get it. The spinning things represent our management spinning in circles trying to figure out what to do next. And the squares with the interconnecting lines represent our organizational chart. Right? Did I guess right? No! I've missed the point entirely. It means something else. Right! It means something that has absolutely nothing to do with my job.
But I do have to admit, it was well done. I turned to my officemate and said, 'Officemate, why didn't you tell me how peachy, neat, keen, and super (mustn't forget super) module three was?'
Ya see, he has already completed CTF. As I watched the presentations, that were really well done (peachy, neat, keen and super) all I could think of was that someone had put in a lot of time and effort to put this presentation together. And, it wasn't just one presentation. No, after every presentation (which had a pause and a replay button displayed on the bottom so you could pause and gaze off into space in awe and wonder and return and restart where you left off or replay the presentation so you could get the most out of it), by golly there was another one to watch. Why, you could keep this up for hours (I've got about three hours invested already and I'm still not done) and be amazed.
What amazed me the most was how much this stuff must have cost to put together. How much additional money has TCIDNN thrown down the rathole of another management fad.
Ya know, I think professors at MBA programs at colleges sit around smoking dope and try to think up the most outlandish, stupid things they can teach to young heros in their MBA programs. Yeah use synergy to work smarter not harder and make sure you think outside the box and be ready to make a paradigm shift. If all else fails, pull your head out of your ass.
But wait. It gets better. It's now Friday at 10:30 AM and I have to do my SHTS (Stupid Hourly Tracking System) entries for the week. We have to have ours done by noon. It really needs to be in by 8:00 PM on Friday. I can just see our general manager waiting in breathless anticipation every Friday night for the SHTS reports. Of course this doen't happen you silly goose. He actually looks at them at 10:00 PM. We have to have ours in by noon, so our manager can make sure everything is correct from his people. That way he looks good to his boss.
I fire up my SHTS system and start entering stuff. Now, CTF is productive education. Yes, they do have a code for nonproductive education and no, I don't know why we would have to have education that was nonproductive. Maybe that's diversity training.
I look up the code for CTF. Let's just say it is CTFSUXO1. And the activity for productive education is DUHO01. I enter this into SHTS and it comes back and tells me it's invalid. How could this be? I try again. Still invalid. Nothing else to do but shoot off a note to the SA (SHTS Administator) and the PMICOS (Project Manager In Charge Of SHTS). I get a message telling me the PMICOS is on vacation. My last hope is the SA.
Let's pause now for an amusing story told to me by the SA. It seems she was surplussed (that's what we called skill rebalancing back then) last October. Three weeks later, I am not making this up, one of the third line managers asked why he wasn't getting any SHTS reports. Upon further investigation, it was revealed that the SHTS reports came from the SA who had been surplussed. How did this happen? 'I dunnoh boss. She was the SA? No one told me. Had I known she actually did sumpin' I wouldn't have surplussed her. Pretty funny, huh? What do we do now?' They brought her back as a contractor.
Here at TCIDNN we have a system similar to AOL Instant Messenger called FARTS (Fast Available Real Time System). If someone is online, you can just FART at them. So the SA, who sees I'm online FARTs me a message: 'What's wrong?' I FART back: 'I'm having trouble with SHTS. It won't take the CTF code.' She FARTs back: Did you enter CTFSUXO1 where the O is the character O as opposed to the numeral?' 'Yep' I FARTed back. 'Hmmmm' , she FARTs.'Let me check it out.'
Since she is the SA, she can do magical stuff with SHTS. Five minutes later she FARTs at me: 'I've entered the appropriate codes on your panel. See if SHTS will let you save it.' I try. It works! I FART back to her: 'Thanks SA. You sure do know your SHTS.' We FART back and forth for the next few minutes exchanging pleasantries. She used to work near my offfice and it was always fun because she and another one of the administrative people (who also got surplussed) would spend most of the day laughing. Ah...the good old days. It is nice to know that she is only a FART away.
After that, the rest of the day was anticlimactic.
I did some more of CTF. I'm still on module three. I'm still amazed. The circle-spoke-circle things are still spinning. The squares still look like our organizational chart.
And this still has absolutely nothing to do with my job.
Posted by denny at June 17, 2002 08:16 PM