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!

I'm Back... for now

Good Evening. So much to say...

The top items for the week are:

Our security company doesn't know where our office is.
The US Postal Service doesn't know where our address is, but the mail man does, so he's looking out for us. You've gotta love the US postal service.
The fire department knows where we are. Apparently the new security system asked them to bring out the hook and ladder.
MNB: See, I didn't even threaten to fire you today.
MNB: I can't believe that he's [Swiper] run two companies. His expectations are totally unreasonable. You can't run a company on wishes.
MNB: You need to remember the rule of three. For each day vacation you want, you need to give me three business days notice. I need to be able to plan. I only have one Harbinger and one Sarcastic Brit. [I should have responded: And I bet even that's too many.]
You may have also heard that the COO needs her beauty rest.

Now... on with the show.

MNB had to have more consultants come in to tell us that we didn't know what we are doing. He actually hired some good consultants this time, and apparently the worst things they could find were that I was too defensive, and that the Sarcastic Brit was too arrogant.

Needless to say, MNB decided that he needed to take the Sarcastic Brit and I to task for it. I believe his exact words were "If you don't clean up your attitude, I will have to ask you to leave the organization." My response was to ask him why he keeps threatening to fire me, and noting the correlation between his threats and my defensiveness. He was confused. Apparently, asking me to leave the organization is not the same as firing me.

The next day, MNB asked me to come into Swiper's office, and handed me a bunch of shares as a reward for good work in helping to make the first commercial shipments happen. Of course, they have a one year vesting period. Maybe the Mecca will still be around in a year. Maybe MNB won't have made good on his threats. Oh well, I can always use free toilet paper. I do not know if the Sarcastic Brit got the same thing. If he didn't it would have been a crime. (He too appreciates a good -that would be free - roll of TP every now and then.) If he's reading now... I was told not to tell anybody... even my best friend. I don't remember any mention of Sarcastic Brits in there though. Nothing like a reward that's not made public. Makes me feel ashamed for doing a good job.

"Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

This week, when the Sarcastic Brit had his one on one meeting with MNB, what I like to call "the weekly whipping", MNB told him that he could be "the most evil manager ever." What would possess somebody to say that type of thing to an employee? Can you say harassment? Of course, I was ready for my weekly whipping, which occurs one day later. I was going to point out that the only power he had over me was firing me. I didn't get my chance.

Unfortunately, MNB worked really hard at being civil during my whipping. He asked me if I was having a problem with anybody. I'm not sure what that was supposed to mean. Perhaps I have made some new enemies that I don't know about. If so, it's news to me. He finished the meeting by noting that he didn't even threaten to fire me, and then accused me of giving him a complex. Funny, he keeps threatening to fire me. And HE's the one developing the complex?

Scary how easy it was to find this blog when searching for the "Sleep well Wesley" quote. It came up number 4. Perhaps I should make it unsearchable by Google. I hope that Swiper and MNB are not Princess Bride fans!

Hijacked

No, he's not been abducted by aliens, just getting ready for vacation.

He says there's not much going on at the mecca which is definitely the truth. With a COO who delays a shipment so she can get her beauty rest what could possibly be happening?

Maximize the Chaos

Greetings,

I am sorry to say that it has been over two weeks since I last wrote anything. (I feel like I am giving confession...) Anyway, the last couple of weeks have been busy at the Mecca. So busy, in fact, that I don't know where to begin.

I will start by telling you that the Mecca is now in new its new digs. However, we had some moving issues. Needless to say, the well oiled machine that is the Mecca was supposed to move last October, but couldn't quite get to it. I guess that things could have been worse.

Listing these issues will likely finish out the post.

1) Our sign is pink. Apparently despite the fact that the Mayor personally welcomed the Mecca to his city (odd, since we moved from across town), the City may tell us to take down our sign on account of it being too pink.

2) We were supposed to have a security system with lots of pretty swipe cards and crap. It turns out the leasing company we were working with decided that we didn't have enough credit for the card readers, so they rationed the keys to the early risers.

3) They held the grand opening only five days after moving in. To add to the drama, they invited a foreign head of state, who actually showed. Apparently, they tried to get the Governator as well, but the notice was too short. Perhaps he will be able to come to our closing party - Hasta la vista, baby.

4) Despite the fact that the overall size of the facility is twice the size of the old place, the engineering lab is half the size. And, they want to build product in the engineering lab.

5) The Used Car Salesman (he used to do sales, now he's the head of finance) spends hours every day fighting with the post office over what our address is. Technically, we have two, but the one he wants to use seems to show up on the other side of town when you use Google Maps.

6) The contractors are still doing renovations.

7) The fire department comes to visit routinely to tell us that we are storing our chemicals improperly, and haven't gotten all of the necessary permits. They haven't started bringing in their axes.

8) They scheduled a product shipment four days after we moved in to the new facility.

9) Apparently, nobody noticed that the building is built on a flood plain.

10) There is no loading dock. Large deliveries must be made through a patio, and down a walkway of patio stones.

Needless to say, it wasn't the best though out move ever. It is actually a nice building, but alas, having a nice building isn't going to turn the Mecca into a decent company. It's still a company who's core competency is generating press releases in order to convince investors to pony up more money.

The Sky is Falling

Greetings. Sorry for not blogging in a while, but there has been a minor lack of stupidity at the Mecca. I think that what is actually happening is that I have been burying my head in the sand and trying to get work done. I have been marginally successful.

Where to start? We shipped our first instrument for real money at the Mecca last week. We even managed to get a press release out of it. Apparently, the original draft of the press release very heavily stressed the fact that we had passed the safety approvals. The Biotech Mecca - our stuff is guaranteed not to electrocute, maim or otherwise incapacitate or kill our customers. It would have been an bonny press release. But alas, MNB had them tone down the lack of death and destruction aspect. Pity.

So... you've shipped an instrument. The only problem is that you're not sure that it works. You think that it works, but you don't have any good data out of it yet. You have some excellent, although pretty much irrelevant data for a sample that
was specifically designed to work except under the most hopeless of cases. So, you know that the thing more or less works. The problem is that every time you try to run the type of samples that customers might be willing to pay real money for, something goes wrong. People all of a sudden are rendered incapable of doing things like sticking a piece of tape onto the top of the sample.

Our outstanding biologists at the Mecca knew that they had about one week to figure out how to tune these instruments for real samples. They have had three or four instruments sitting around for the better part of a month, but have never managed to run more than the kindergarten samples. It started to dawn on people that our first customers would want to run more than the kindergarten stuff that has no scientific value, but that was only late last week. At that point, MNB issued the edict that the Sarcastic Brit or I had to observe the start of every run to make sure that the biologists were not doing anything funny, and try to ensure that things would work well enough to get sufficient real samples to tune the instrument. No meaningful data were generated last week. The runs were beautiful, but alas their boss hadn't mentioned that it was time to leave the sand table behind.

I don't think that I've mentioned the our service engineer and applications scientist (boy is that an exaggeration of his abilities) are boarding a plane for the Far East on Saturday morning. Too bad they still don't know what settings they need to put into the instrument get coax decent data out of it.

So, I was asked to ensure that we can get two decent runs out of the instruments before I go home tonight. The service engineer, who generally gets into work at about 7:30am to beat the traffic was still there at 6:45 pm. We were tweaking the instrument to get the best data possible out of it. The Chihuahua (small, nippy, nasty biologist) was attempting to dispense the samples. She was screwing it up, and looking for ways to make it not her fault. Her boss (Jaba) was hanging around, as well as one of the senior biologists. My cell phone rings. It's my wife. She asks me where I am. I reply that I am at work. She asks me why. I calmly tell her that I am still at work because the sky is falling. She says Oh. In that case, you are getting takeout for supper. I'll see you with the food.

Now... we have one more day to finalize the parameters for running our first customers samples. No pressure. Everybody is scared that it's going to go to hell at our first installation for a paying customer. MNB is hurling threats, promises, and anything else he can to convince the Sarcastic Brit and I to keep the train on the tracks. The Biologists have sat on instruments for weeks, not getting the information we need to be able to actually convince a paying customer that we have a clue, and now, we have to pull the rabbit out of the hat.

MNB has a fondness for acronyms. One of his favourites is PFA. That would be pulled from ass. That is where our parameters will come from. I just hope that whoever ends up pulling them is feeling lucky. Maybe I should tell our service engineer to smash all of the optics and plead shipping damage to buy some more time. Unfortunately the stellar biologists at the Mecca would most likely just use it for more crayon and finger paint time.

The paycheck is not important. Go about your business.

Greetings. I must apologize for not blogging more, but things haven't been quite as utterly stupid lately. I can almost believe that the Mecca is a viable company, and that we will make it. Then, I take stock of things and think that I must be REALLY crazy.

The competent accountant finishes his last day on Monday. He was the guy who did the payroll. That made him the canary in the coal mine. I used to ask him routinely - Are we going to get paid this week? His answer was always, "I'm still here, aren't I? When the money's gone, so am I." Needless to say, I have to question the state of the Mecca's finances. My understanding is that it's not that bad... and they haven't cut my pay recently, so that's a good sign.

What scares me is that the accountant did all of the things that made it worth my while to go to work. He did the payroll, administered the benefits, and made sure that, in general, Swiper and his crew of merry backstabbers didn't treat the employees in a fashion that violated too many labor laws. With the accountant leaving, the Accountant that does the SOX compliance (or not... as the case may be) will be doing payroll. Yikes. He is always out back doing business in Spanish on his cell phone. If you walk in on him when he's holding a private teleconference in the meeting room, he scuttles like a cockroach. When things get really bad, he resorts to using really bad English in order to make you think that he's too dumb to be up to something. Not the kind of guy I want responsible for making sure I get paid, and can therefore pay my own creditors.

The "Director of Finance" is a used car salesman that feels it necessary to shake your hand every time he talks to you. (Let me tell you that grows tiresome really quickly. He drives a gigantic truck with Florida plates (does he commute in to California?). Moreover, he takes up four parking spaces with this monster truck that he supposedly "inherited" from his brother. Ironically, I asked him why he was running Florida plates one day, and the story terminated in his inquiring as to my interest in buying the thing. As I said, he really is a used are salesman.

The HR functions are going to be handled by the "Executive Assistant". This is the replacement for the Horsie Princess. I actually like the Horsie princess much better than this woman. She keeps bragging to the Dragon lady about how she "Married herself a white boy". She is Latino... which I didn't think was that far from "white", but apparently, being a Canuck, I am not cultured in such things. I really don't care about her white husband, or white kids the she brags about. However, it would be really nice if she would answer the phone when she is supposed to be working the switchboard. Too bad she's too busy flirting with all of the senior managers. (That would be men and women.) If you are a VP, she has all the time in the world for you. If you are low level scum, she can't even be bothered to talk to you. My desk is literally one cubicle from the front desk, and yet she will call me two or three times in fifteen minutes to come and get packages when they come in. If they are offending her so much, she could bring them over. Needless to say, I don't see any useful HR functions being filled there.

Then, there is the fact that Flyboy will end up taking on a bunch of the accountant's shipping duties. That would be fine, except MNB keeps threatening to fire him. Of course, I should probably talk to MNB, as Flyboy supposedly reports to me. I should probably feel upset about my boss threatening my employee all the time. Unfortunately, It just makes me feel relieved, it means that MNB can get his threats out of his system before he runs into me.

In short, the guy who does everything useful (at least as far as the things that are important to me... like getting paid) has quit. There has been no real plan to replace him, and everybody who is supposed to be taking up his duties is either lazy, incompetent, or likely to be sacked for no good reason.

It all seems to be running fine, until you take a good look under the hood.