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.

New warning on CAD software: Contains chemicals known to cause psychopathic behavior in the state of California Part III

A couple of weeks passed. Things seemed to be settled into one of those funks that although it stinks, you can almost convince yourself that there is actually not a rotten pile of dung right outside your window.

It was decided that there was too much drafting work to do, so we would hire a mechanical designer (or senior drafter) to assist Buffalo Bill. Of course everybody (but Bill) was thinking about it being his replacement. I was still hopeful that it wouldn't come to that, but I wasn't holding my breath.

The next incident that added fuel to the fire was a faux pas that I committed. Mr. Ineffectual got a couple of resumes from a body shop (temp agency), and Buffalo Bill was offended that the Sarcastic Brit and I were sent the resumes while he was not. I figured it couldn't hurt to pass them along and forwarded the email. It never occurred to me that the email also contained the hourly rates for both candidates. To make matters worse, the body shop was charging more for either of these two guys than we were paying Buffalo Bill. Needless to say, this made Buffalo Bill unhappy.

I tried to smooth over the situation by taking Bill out for lunch and telling him that it really doesn't matter what anybody else makes, and that all he should be worried about was his own work and compensation. I added that I used to worry about things like that, but there was no point, and life was too short. I thought that maybe I had gotten through to him, and his attitude would improve.

We interviewed two candidates. One had lots of experience using our CAD package, and came from the body shop. The other candidate was a friend of a friend of one of the other engineers, but didn't seem to have ever used our CAD software (which is probably the most common package available.) Anyway, Buffalo Bill took over the interviews. Far from being a guy on the verge of being sacked for producing nothing but flaming piles of doo, he acted as though he were the head of engineering or something.

Needless to say, he didn't like the guy from the body shop. Apparently he was smarmy. Of course, I am sure that his hourly rate (that was about 50% higher than Bill's) didn't have anything to do with it. The other guy - the one that seemingly had NO experience whatever with our CAD software was the obvious winner.

Mr. Ineffectual, the Sarcast Brit and I sat down the next day to discuss the two candidates. We decided to go with the guy who would need the least amount of help. Mr. Ineffectual called the body shop to make the arrangements.

I was sitting in an open area of the office that day, eating lunch with Fly Boy when Bill came by and joined us. I was talking to Flyboy about the amount of work we to do, and commented that getting the new designer in would help immensely.

I saw Buffalo Bill grow tense as he asked which guy we picked. I told him. He started swearing about not being consulted and that his oppinion obviously didn't amount to sh!t. Unfortunately, that statement was pretty true. If his work had been adequate, or if he hadn't made an ass of himself in the interviews, or if I hadn't grown so tired of his griping for months, I might have cared more. He stormed off. I shrugged.

The next morning was a company wide meeting. Buffalo Bill decided that he was going to boycot. I heard him say this and left. At that point, he told the Dragon Lady that he knew how much money the new mechanical engineer was making, and he was very upset. When the Dragon Lady asked him where he got his information, he revealed that the informant was the account that does the SOX compliance. Since Bill and the accountant are not particularly chummy, I have to assume that the accountant was trying to make the worst of a bad situation. What did he have to gain? I have no clue. I should probably mention the fact that the new mechanical engineer has a Master's degree in mechanical engineering, and not an associate's degree in project management from DeVry. Of course those are more or less eqivalent qualifications for doing mechanical design work.

The Dragon Lady was livid about salary information being given out, and she was also sick and tired of Buffalo Bill. She spoke to Swiper. Then I spoke to Swiper, and had to explain why Bill was still hanging around like a plague over the company. I didn't have a good answer. It wasn't because of his awsome work.

I talked to Mr. Ineffectual, the Sarcastic Brit, and human resources, and we decided to pull the plug the next day. We would do it nice and early, before too many people show up. (Starting time at the Mecca is typically the crack of noon.) Everything was in place. We arranged for Bill's replacement (Mr. Smarmy) to show up after noon so there would be no confrontation.

That afternoon, Buffalo Bill tried to re-enact the highlights from a Sabres game and hip-checked Mr. Ineffectual into the wall. Perhaps that is what made Mr. ineffectual turn red. Perhaps it was the comment "that was for being an idiot". In either case, it's not a wise thing to do to the boss. Buffalo bill was given his severence that afternoon.

Since the Sarcastic Brit was nominally Bill's manager, he got the enviable job of delivering the pink slip. Apparently, Bill didn't think that the Brit would do it, as his parting words were akin to "Et tu, Brute". Later, Bill sent the Sarcastic Brit an email, stating there were no hard feelings, as he was obviously the sacrificial lamb for the project being late.

Of course, the the good feelings didn't end there. He called up one of our most important vendors and told them that the Mecca was laying people off because they had no money to pay employees or suppliers. Needless to say, the vendor was very happy that Bill had been sacked for being an incompetent dork with a bad attitude.

Will Mr. Smarmy fare any better than Buffalo Bill? We don't know. After we took the wheel barrow to Buffalo Bill's cubicle, and found litterally several thousand sheets with markups, and no way of knowing which had been added to the system, we decided to sort the little pieces of paper (ten man hours later) and deliver them to Mr Smarmy for vetting. We haven't seen him since.

I have learned this: The Mecca is not a safe place for mechanical designers.

The Screen Fairy Has Arrived

First off, for my regular readers, I must apologize yet again for taking a brief hiatus from writing. The impotent situation at the Mecca has forced me to seek an outlet. I have been conquering the world, playing a very old version of Sid Meyer's Civilization - possibly one of the best computer games ever conceived. Perhaps I should start referring to Swiper as "Oh most untrustworthy leader of the infidels." I guess that could be taken a less than a compliment.

Anyway, on to today's fun and games.

The conference room at the Mecca has the usual crap - the polycon conference phone that hisses madly (even when not in use) whenever it is in the presence of a cell phone. (Please turn your phones off before entering the meeting room.) A projector that isn't bright enough to be seen except at night, during a lunar eclipse that occurs during a complete failure of all street lights, and of course - the screen from hell.

When the contractors installed the screen two years ago, they made two mistakes. First, they did not mount it in centre of the wall (directly across from the middle of the conference table), and they mounted it upside down. The end result of this quality work was that the screen wouldn't stay down and the projector gave a very nice trapezoidal image when it was placed in the middle of the conference table.

At the time the thing was mounted, the Sarcastic Brit mentioned to the CFO that perhaps he should call the contractors back in to fix it. He did not, and we have lived with it for two years. Why fix the problem? Trapezoids are interesting and will add spice to any presentation. As for the screen not staying down - we are the Biotech Mecca. Anything is possible for us. Hey... that router plugged in directly below the screen - if we just tie this Ethernet cable in a knot, we can loop it around the router plug, and the screen will stay down. Except of course, when it unplugs the router. Ce n'est pas un problème!

Today, the Dragon Lady approached me and practically begged me to fix the screen. Apparently the quality installation caught the eye of several of the board members. They pointed out that our screen installation gave the suggestion that we were either incapable of fixing the problem, or didn't care about fixing the problem. Of course, they probably should have been more focused on the fact that the company is going down the crapper, but it would seem that the correct mounting of the screen is critical to the success of the company. Of course they probably wouldn't have noticed it, had the account who does our SOX compliance not rushed into the conference room and put the screen up (in front of half of the board members) in order to prevent them from seeing how badly the thing was mounted. Then again, they have all seen that screen many times, so I'm not sure why he was so worried about it this time.

Not wanting to upset the Dragon Lady, I headed into the conference room this afternoon to fix it. The accountant who does our SOX compliance was right there. You need help - I will tell Jar Jar to do this tomorrow. First of all, why would HE tell Jar Jar to do it, seeing as Jar Jar supposedly reports to me. (Of course I told my boss that I refused to manage such a collosal waste of space...) Second of all, I am sure that there are laws against people like Jar Jar hanging heavy objects above head height.

So, I went into the lab to find mounting hardware. We used to have a bunch of screws and stuff, but alas it was small enough to fit in somebody's pocket, so all of the useful hardware grew feet and walked away. I did find some quarter inch butterfly style wall anchors though, but the heads of the bolts were collosal and didn't fit. I took my treasures back to the conference room and set to work.

I managed to get the hangers over the bolt heads (barely) when the Sarcastic Brit came in and suggested that agressive pulling on the screen would likely result in sombody getting a projector on the head. Certainly that would be expected of Jar Jar, but I should probably do better myself. Then again, perhaps the thing would fall and take out two or three lying weasels. Maybe it would even take out Swiper. Too good to be true. I considered the use of Duct Tape, and decided that although my inner Candian approved, it wasn't the way things were done in Silicon Valley. Instead, I fastened the screen in place with cable ties. They are rated for 50 pounds. I figure that anybody who pulls on the screen with more than 100 pounds of force is BEGGING to have a screen split their skull. I wonder if there is a way to get Swiper to test it.

The long and short of the situation: My time is better spent fixing the projector screen than solving the issues with the company's technology. After all, how can you get any work done with those damn distracting Ethernet cables spoiling your presentations? And yes... I did mount the centre of the screen directly across from the centre of the table.

The beatings will continue until morale improves

First of all, I must apologize for my recent hiatus from posting. Things have been very busy at the Biotech Mecca, although (as usual) nothing really moves forward.

I would like to take a break from Captain Fantastic and spend a bit of time writing about morale. What precipitated this unanticipated change in topics, you may ask? It has come to my attention that the executive assistant is leaving. What makes this special is that it's only been a couple of weeks since the useless receptionist was sacked, and the executive assistant has only been employed with the Biotech Mecca for less than six weeks.

Originally, the Biotech Mecca had only the receptionist. At least, she usually sat at the front desk. That is when she wasn't napping in her car, participating in deep religious conversations with the accountant who is supposed to be doing the SEC filings (remember him?), staring with moon eyes at the Sarcastic Brit (who is apparently the sexiest man in the universe), or just generally staring out into space. Please note that this list did NOT include answering the telephone. Since there was no automated switchboard at that time, it made everybody at the Biotech Mecca somewhat difficult to get in touch with.

Anyway, the receptionist was responsible for greeting people at the door, issuing purchase orders (and God forbid actually ordering crap), as well as performing generally assistive tasks. The truth of the matter is that she was hired by a couple of people who thought that she was hot (I would hate to see their opinion of ugly). She also had about a 25% success rate with ordering things, and was nearly as bad about keeping track of the paperwork for this. Despite these things, she was sent to training so that she would be qualified to do the SEC filings. I should also mention that she managed to convince her boss (the unmarried accountant who thought that she was hot) that it should be no problem to stop working Fridays. After all, she wasn't being paid that well anyway.

Before too long, it was decided that the Biotech Mecca had grown enough that we needed a person to take care of accounts payable. Hence the Dragon Lady was hired. Being a cross between Tony Soprano and Rambo, the Dragon Lady didn't take kindly to lost paperwork and soon assumed the ordering part of things. Then, she started answering the phones. Then she started taking care of all of the shipping. After that, the Dragon Lady started taking care of things like making sure that the cleaners came in to do the floors, and eventually also picked up the task of being the personal assistant for the CEO and the COO.

Oddly enough, it was determined that another person was required. They hired the Amazon princess. As far as I can tell, the only thing important to this particular princess is her horse. As she sits in the cubicle across from me, I have gotten to hear all about the horse (and about how sweetly I talk to my wife on the telephone.) Anyway, the Horse Princess apparently has a long history of working for functional companies. It seems that in functional companies, executive assistants are not required to go and fetch lunch, run to the business store, and clean up the conference room before important meetings.

I do not need to tell you that the Horse Princess and the Dragon Lady don't get along. I have always been told that power struggles between women can get ugly. I now understand what that means.

After a week or two, the insightful management decided that all of this administrative assistance was too expensive, so they axed the receptionist. Of course, the Dragon Lady had managed to take over most of her duties anyway. The only problem was that they needed a warm body to man the front desk from 9:00-5:00. The Dragon Lady worked 7:00-3:00. It was decided that the Dragon Lady and the Horse Princess would take turns working late. Unfortunately, nobody ever told the Dragon Lady, who suddenly got pushed into a 7:00-5:00 schedule and has yet to see a dime of extra money. Needless to say, she's not happy to see the Horse Princess work from 9:00-4:30. Apparently, that is because the Horse Princess takes her lunch at 4:30 so she can leave early and go to see her horse. I don't want to know.

It didn't take long for the Dragon Lady to start breathing fire. When 7-5 turns into 7-6, and you feel like you are running the whole show (doing what two weeks before was supposed to be the work of three people), it tends to make you irritable. The next thing that happened was that the Dragon Lady was asked to manage the company morale. I believe that they were thinking specifically of the Sarcastic Brit and myself, as we tend to be unsubtley pessimistic about anything to do with the Biotech Mecca.

It seems that the Horse Princess has only two functions. The first is to talk to real estate agents about moving the company to somewhere that doesn't suck. I believe that the proper description would be somewhere that we could conduct business without the Occupational Health and Safety Administration throwing us all in jail. The second is to revise all of the forms that the Dragon Lady has been spending the last year creating. However, that answering the phone for the executives when they are away (which is pretty much all of the time) is not on that list.

I get the picture that the Dragon Lady has not been very interested in playing ball with the Horse Princess. Perhaps this is part of the reason that the Horse Princess has given her notice. Perhaps it is because the senior management has a long track record of lies and incompetence. In either case, she gave one week notice, and is leaving tomorrow. From what I hear, the CEO had no idea why she would want to leave such a wonderful company, and nobody has bothered informing the COO who got home from a three-week vacation in the Middle East (religious pilgrimage perhaps?) only to be shuffled onto a plane bound for New York to try to sooth irate investors. Perhaps the COO won't notice anyway though, who emailed me today to find out what is going on at here at the Biotech Mecca.

When the Horse Princess told me that she was leaving, I asked her why. She cited her commute, the horse, and the generally screwed up state of the company. She told me that at least we would be moving to a nice new facility. My response was "Great. Then we can be a crappy company in a good facility." She didn't argue. She did make a point of telling me how important I am to the company. She then asked me how I have made it almost two years. My response is that the company is much better than it used to be. But those stories are for future posts.

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.

Video says it all Pardon the ads.