Dear John Letters

Greetings loyal readers. It has been quite some time since I last posted, and I have heard that some of you have been wondering if I have finally departed from the tender loving environs of the Biotech Mecca.

Unfortunately, I still turn up every day for my generous helping of chaos, foolishness and abuse. The story for today however, is not about the Sarcastic Brit or myself... it's about Flyboy.

If you will recall, Flyboy was originally hired as a general "go to guy" for the engineering department. Alas, he had the misfortune of appearing beneath my name on the org chart. Needless to say, that put him in the sights to be picked off by MNB.

MNB doesn't see any value in having a general engineering tech that can deal with vendors, sort stuff out in the lab, work on documentation control, and do mundane, crappy tasks like dealing with packaging vendors. After all, that is why he has the Harbinger of doom, and the Sarcastic Brit.

Anyway, seeing that his position was somewhat precarious, Flyboy ingratiated himself to the Used Car Salesman. After all, he had already been drawn into being the purchasing agent for the engineering team, as well as the person responsible for pretty much all logistics. It only made sense that he should report to the head of finance. (I had to try very hard not to laugh when I wrote that last sentence. What kind of idiots would put a used car salesman in charge of the checkbook?)

But back to Flyboy. It seems that Flyboy inserted himself into the middle of a minor war between the Dragon Lady and the used car salesman. It's a pity... as I feel that he was more or less a victim of the infamous management style that is so pervasive at the Mecca.

First of all, Flyboy's contract had expired. He was not under contract, not full time, not under any agreement. He would show up (after an hour and a quarter on the road), work for the day, trying to avoid drive-by abuse by the likes of MNB, and hope like hell every payday that they would provide him with payment. I can't think of a better way "Sleep Well Wesley... for I shall most likely kill you in the morning."

Second of all, the Dragon Lady has a very simple set of rules. Do your job. Don't screw up. That means primarily not losing track of trivial things like purchase orders and packing slips. After all, how can she pay the bills if she doesn't have the purchase order (so that you know what you've ordered), and the packing slip (so that you have a record or receiving the goods?) Unfortunately, she wasn't getting these things. The larger problem was that her boss (The Used Car Salesman) is chronically trying to avoid paying the bills, so wasn't all that worried about the missing paperwork. The best way to keep cash in the bank is to not pay the bills. If you don't see the bills, you don't have to worry about not paying them.

At the core of the problem (in my humble opionion) was that the Used Car Salesman has no idea about running a finance department. He has no idea that for a company producing product (as such) purchasing is a full time job. You can't add facilities management, shipper, and any number of other duties to that. Flyboy however, saw the precariousness of his situation, and didn't say anything.

Unfortunately, Flyboy isn't really a crack administrator, and was always looking for ways to streamline the process. Usually that involved doing things in a way that would entail the least amount of work for him. So... the paperwork was pretty much always the victim. I think that he knew better... but was trying so hard to please that he lost track of the need to dot the Is and cross the Ts.

Now the Dragon Lady was in a bind. She was missing all of the paper trail that she needed to do her job. As a result, even with whatever temporary help they brought in for her, she was working an extra three or four hours each day, and her mountain of papers kept getting larger. Needless to say, when she started having days starting at 7:00 am and ending at 10:00 pm, she had to do something. The final straw was when six months of purchase orders and packing slips were found in Flyboy's desk. The obvious conclusion was that Flyboy was setting her up.

Although I will admit that it certainly looked like that, I believe that the real issue was that Flyboy was not an administrator, and hence chose to throw the paperwork out of the sinking ship that was his workload. He probably meant to get back to it... but the funny thing about paperwork is that the longer it sits, the harder it is to go back and sort it out.

The upshot was that the Used Car Salesman decided that Flyboy had to go.

Did he speak to him before hand and try to find out what was going on? Not that I heard. He just decided to turn on his "employee" (much like a rabid dog), and attack. The only problem was that Flyboy was not at the office. He was taking a couple of days off.

Eager to take action, the Used Car Salesman called Flyboy on his cell phone. He didn't answer. I will admit that I don't take calls from the Mecca either. They are never good, and I have heard about the sky falling too many times for it to trigger any emotional reaction apart from disgust.

Flyboy didn't return the call, and the Used Car salesman is a man of action. Actually, I think that he was probably intimidated by the thought of having to fire him in person. So, he left him a voicemail. I can imagine that it went something like this. "Flyboy, I'm afraid that we are going to have to let you go. We will send you your last check and your things in the mail."

Thanks. They say that getting dumped on your answering machine is hard. Perhaps the people who say that have never been fired via answering machine. Just another example of the professionalism and class that are so pervasive in the senior management at the Mecca.

OSHA 12

Good evening. It seems that even at the Biotech Mecca, history repeats itself. This is the sequel to OSHA 11. It seems that despite the new location, old habits die hard.

The local fire department was in doing our inspections for various safety issues. This is a good thing, I suppose, except that they keep finding chemicals that are not properly stored, and paperwork that isn't properly done.

Somehow, Jaba managed to get talked into being the safety officer for the company, so he gets to deal with the fire department. I believe that the conversation went something like this.

Safety inspector: You don't have your permit for handling biological waste yet. You can't legally handle most of the chemicals that you are using until you get your license.

Jaba: How long does it take to get a license?

Safety inspector: 90 days.

Jaba: Is it faster to transfer the license from the old facility to this location?

Safety inspector: Why yes it is. Unfortunately, you never bothered to get a license at the old facility.


It seems that permits are not the only place that the Mecca is trying to skimp these days. It would also seem that we are testing the rules on squatter's rights in the state of California.

It would seem that nobody bothered to allocate space for instrument manufacture. Added to this was the fact that the engineering lab in the new facility is about half the size of the space in the old facility and you have problems. How do you overcome such a lack of planning:

1) You fire enough engineers so that everybody can occupy the smaller space
2) You send the used car salesman in to negotiate a lease on more of the building.
--He tells the landlord that the company will lease more space in his vacant building
--The Landlord lets you move in since the space is free anyway and you obviously need the room right now.
--You move your stuff in and then tell the landlord that you are planning on paying him in stock.
--You don't mention that the company is basically out of money and that the share price tanks every day.
--You refuse to sign the lease.
--You don't bother to move your stuff out of the lab.

Presto, you have just increased your floor space by 50% without it costing a dime. Great work. I wonder if the landlord tenant rules for evictions apply to commercial real estate.

Of course, I would expect no less of a company where the directory of finance says things like "Oh, we will pay our vendors. Just, not right now."

The Good Old Days

I may have mentioned in my last post that we are running out of money. At least that's what our SEC posting proclaimed.

It's no problem though, we just won't pay our vendors. Remember the nice new building that we moved into? We never paid the construction company that renovated the building for us. They sent the used car salesman a nasty letter wanting payment. His response was something like this:

We are currently broke, but we are trying to raise more money. We can't pay you until we do. Don't worry though, this happens a couple of times each year and we always manage to find more suckers.

The construction company sent a very nice response. In summary:

Not our problem. You signed a contract. Pay up. By the way, we are putting a lien on your assets. Have a nice day.

This is very much like the old days with the petty thief CFO. We still haven't recovered from the damage he did to our reputation.

But alas... I got paid yesterday, so they have earned my attendance for another half month.

Lights Out.

It would seem that the thieves can't do nearly as much damage as the used car salesman. He noticed that a bunch of lights were on in the offices last Thursday. It was late, and not many people were around, so he took it upon himself to shut them off and save the Mecca some money on their electricity bill. Of course, he did so by flipping the breaker that controlled the power to half of the building. The half of the building that contained the freezers. The freezers containing something like $100k in newly acquired reagents, special reagents, lovingly procured, signed for by Swiper himself.

Friday morning came along, and the entire biology group spent the morning try to figure out why the alarm on every freezer was screaming at them, while the the heavy equipment in the engineering lab was fully functional. Apparently it was due to the fact that engineers are more likely to shut the lights off when they leave the room.

They probably should fire him. Of course, the last I heard the used car salesman wasn't actually getting paid. I think that he was working for toilet paper, rather than cash. I once heard it said, "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." So, does that mean if you pay in toilet paper you get ... Do I need to fill this in?

Is a used car salesman better than a petty thief?

The petty thief, formerly know as the CFO will have to wait for the next post. It would seem, though, his ghost still wandering the Mecca.

Only the best at the Mecca

I went in to work on Saturday morning. I know this sounds odd, seeing as how highly appreciated I feel most of the time. In fact, I didn't go in to do work. I went in to pick up some crap that I had forgotten in my office on Friday night, and to spend some time peacefully working on a presentation. (It just happens that the presentation was part of a job interview to go work for the competition. But that, as they say, is another story.)

So... armed with my shiny new RFID card, I approached the front door and swiped the card. The little light went green, and the door went click. In I went.

I had no more than entered the building when I was confronted by the alarm panel, sitting there, beeping at me to remind me that I had to feed it a code to disable the alarm.

Too bad they had given out the key cards and not bothered to give out the codes. Apparently, the used car salesman that passes for the head of finance had a spreadsheet of codes, and couldn't figure out how to send everybody their code without revealing it to the rest of the company. The solution is obviously to not send ANYBODY their code.

That's ok, I thought, I will just call the security company and tell them who I am before they call the cops. Oh right, nobody sent the info out for the alarm company either.

So... I looked at the card, ignored the alarm, and walked to my desk to look them up on the web. The alarm company's name was on the card after all.

I called the alarm company and gave them my name. Of course, I noticed that it was PRINTED ON THE CARD as well. I was surprised that they didn't put the the Mecca's address on the card for added convenience.

So, they asked me who I worked for. The Mecca didn't ring any bells. They asked me for the address. I gave it to them. Apparently, they didn't have any clients at that address. I tried the company name again. Oh... there it is. And you are? I read them my name as printed on my oh so secure security card. They gave me my code.

Fantastic. And then I laughed at them, told them that I found the card in the parking lot and would leave a nice note behind after I took all of the Mecca's stuff. Har!