Jar Jar

We have this technician who claims to be an engineer. He has been given many tasks over his last year of employment, and has pretty much managed to screw up every one of them.

He showed up at our doorstep begging for a job. My boss at the time - the former VP of engineering who was sacked for being honest and competent (also known as the Mad Man from down South) was sucked in and decided that the guy was so eager that we couldn't go wrong. After all, he said that he was willing to do anything. Really? People are not always so eager once they are in the door.

We originally gave him a task doing some chemical etching. I was very happy to have somebody else do this because our lovely facility is not really equipped to deal with acid vapor, and it's better to have anybody do it but me. Unfortunately, he seems unable to follow a protocol. Of course, it didn't help that he lost the protocol and rather than asking for somebody to find it for him on the server, he just wrote a new one. After all... he's an engineer.

Then, we needed a vacuum pump rebuilt. He claimed to know how to do this, and had done it many times. Of course, when we gave him the kit and the simple task of matching the parts to the kit content list he couldn't figure out which part was which.

So, we decided to make things easier and asked him to arrange the bolts and nuts. Once he was finished, they were in no discernible order. He claimed to have a system, but the Sarcastic Brit - with the Oxford PhD- was too dumb to figure it out. The Sarcastic Brit asked Jar Jar to find an M3 by 10mm socket head cap screw. This required looking in every bin. Needless to say, Jar Jar was asked to come up with a slightly less random scheme. After attempt number three, the engineers just decided to cope with the fact that the M3 washers and M3 nuts live in the same bin, which is conveniently located between the M6 by 10 mm bolts and the M6 by 14 mm bolts, and nowhere near the M3 bolts that supposedly mate with the M3 washers and nuts.

Next, we asked him to clean up the lab and put things away. His first solution was to go to my boss. (supposedly Jar Jar reports to me, although I will deny it when asked... after all, I'm not allowed to fire him!) He managed to get engineering work to do. After all, he is an engineer. Of course, the task that he was given was so useless and pointless that I will only discuss it once I have run out of more interesting material. (Wait for the post in which I discuss the dark box).

The next attempt to have Jar Jar clean up the lab resulted in him opening the drawers and randomly pitching items into them. We still haven't found all of the bits. Of course, he still hasn't mastered basic matching, so like things were not even stuffed into the same drawers. Yikes!

Next, our lovely accounts payable / buyer (a cross between Tony Soprano and Rambo), the Dragon lady, asked Jar Jar to break down some boxes. He declined. Apparently, it's not his job. It seems that "I will do anything" does not include things that could be construed to be useful. Funny, but when she asks me to take the boxes out, I ask if there is anything else I can do in addition to that.

Next, we handed him to Buffalo Bill, who is our mechanical designer. Buffalo Bill does not play as fast an loose with instruction as the Sarcastic Brit or I do, so we figured that maybe he could get something useful out of him. The task was simple: Here is a stack of drawings - all you have to do is make sure that all of the parts in the drawings show up in the spreadsheet. If all goes well, Buffalo Bill figured that he could get Jar Jar to look at the parts we had in back and count them. After wasting two weeks on this little endeavor, Buffalo Bill was forced to admit that it was a waste of time, and that Jar Jar just wasn't up to the task. Of course, I took a lot of heat for the two week project slip from that one. Apparently, it is sometimes better to have no help than bad help.

Finally the Sarcastic Brit and I decided that we could only use Jar Jar as an errand boy. He owns a van and may have a valid drivers license. (I haven't asked and don't really want to know.) So today I hear the Dragon Lady call back to the cubicle area that Jar Jar is on the phone and needs to talk to the Sarcastic Brit. I was immediately interested when I heard the Sarcastic Brit exclaim "And why, Jar Jar, are you at the Home Depot?"

Unable to contain my curiosity, I had to ask. Apparently, he sent Jar Jar out to pick up an item from a place a couple of miles down the street. Jar Jar was armed with a company name and street address, as well as the helpful tip that the company was close to the Home Depot. His response was that he knew the area very well. So well in fact, that he forgot about the address and went directly to the Home Depot. Imagine his surprise when the poor clerk at the hardware store didn't know anything about an open purchase order, the Sarcastic Brit who had placed the order, the Biotech Mecca, or even what an ionizing dust-off gun was.

Well, at least he made it back in one piece. Of course, then the Sarcastic Brit was faced with the task of explaining its purpose and operation to Jar Jar, who will be it's primary user. Ok, you plug this in to the wall. This end goes to the air line. Here is where the air comes out. Yes, you may need some extra fittings. No... this is where you connect it to the air line. No, it's ok, you can do it tomorrow - when I am on a plane bound for Hong Kong.

Needless to say, I too will be out tomorrow. Coincidence - I think not.

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