Harbinger of Doom Versus the Stupid Acronym

This post will henceforth be known as HODVSTSA, in order to keep competing blogs (or Scott Adams) from stealing my material.

I must apologize for not having blogged for a while, but all of my mental energy is consumed by learning the names of all of the new employees at the Mecca. We now have five applications scientists. Four of them are in United states. Strange, since our US install base consists of two instruments presently. The new characters in this post are:

My Next New Boss
This is one of MNB's cronies that he brought in from his former (tanking employer). His cronies now compose over 2/3 of the engineering team. He has also been parachuting them into manufacturing, product management, and any other function he can drive a wedge into.

The Product Mismanager
This is another of MNB's cronies, although he was not billed as such, the Product Mismanager admitted it to me. Apparently, he thought that it would impress me. The Sarcastic Brit's first comment on this particularly character: Wow – just think of the material that you will get from him!

The Borg (only 5 so far but the mothership is coming)
Yep, they have hired five apps guys to support effectively two instruments (although it may be up to a whopping 10 instruments by the end of the year. ) That's two instruments per guy. Oh right, our service engineer is still doing all of the installations and real work. What are these guys doing? They are home based... so my guess is – sucking at the corporate teet.

This except is from a real email thread that started with some remote troubleshooting of a customer unit by one of the new applications chemists that we hired and threw out into the field with two day's training.


Borg – 1 of 5

MNNB
Could you do me a favor and translate that into English?
Seriously, what is a cylinder. My guess is that it extends and retracts the platform?
Thanks.
Borg – 1 of 5


MNNB

Borg – 1 of 5,
The [brand 1] cylinder is the rotary and up-down air cylinder that moves the sample holder in and out of the instrument.
Pardon the vernacular. When I got here I also wondered what “snoots” and “choils” were here till someone told me.
MNNB


Borg – 1 of 5

MNNB,
You are just torturing me. You mean to tell me that you aren’t going to include the definitions of “snoots” and “choils”? I have no idea of what they are either!

Thanks!
Borg – 1 of 5


Product Mismanager

Hi,
As a side note, I would really, really encourage us to not reference any outside component vendors in our discussions – internally and externally.

I’ve heard: [brand 1] and [brand 2]. Please refrain from using these references in the future. It will be a vernacular change.

These should be the [our stupid product part 1] and [our stupid product part 2], respectfully.

I realize these are a mouthful…

Snoots and choils are OK for now since no one seemed to know what they are…

I’ll be implementing a piggy bank approach and getting people to pay $1/reference.

Thanks for your support and I’m really pretty laid back…


Harbinger

Not to cause trouble, but doesn’t it make it hard to procure parts if we are not allowed to discuss vendor identities? I tried your idea of vague descriptions on a couple of the POs that I had to file today, and finance was unappreciative.

When I told them that this was your suggestion, the Used Car Salesman asked me to email you for clarification.

Cheers,
Harbinger.



And for those of you wondering if I actually submitted PO requests with the company names removed... Do you really need to ask. Of course I did, and then ran as fast as I could from the Dragon Lady :D