In another post here you mentioned the laptop incident and it reminded me of a comedy of events that happened when I worked for a state bureaucracy. It would be funny if it had happened to anybody else but me.
I worked in the main central office for the survey division of the highway department.?ÿ My short time in the main office had absolutely nothing to do with surveying and everything to do with paperwork.?ÿ One of my many tasks was to keep track of equipment inventory.?ÿ ANY equipment purchased by the survey division.?ÿ Anything that cost more than $50 at that time required a little metal inventory sticker and an equipment number.?ÿ Those little tags were IMPOSSIBLE to keep on range poles, tribrachs or tripods.?ÿ And to make it even more bureaucratic each piece of inventoried equipment required a monthly "usage" report to tally how many hours of use that particular piece of equipment endured...and there were 8 field offices with 14 crews across the state.?ÿ I learned to love tequila...
For the entire state there were 3 "survey managers" (chief of parties) that supervised these 14 crews.?ÿ Those 3 individuals spent their entire life in a state vehicle driving between all their field offices.?ÿ I saw each one about once a month when they came in to turn in their equipment paperwork to me.
This was in the middle 1990's and computers were becoming pretty common.?ÿ These 3 managers were issued some of the first laptop computers that anybody in the highway department had seen.?ÿ The laptops were delivered to my office with the knowledge the supervisors would eventually wind up in my office to pick them up and I was, after all, responsible for putting a little inventory tag on all of them.?ÿ The laptops were delivered and I signed for them...something I would come to regret.
They all got entered into my great maelstrom of equipment numbers and issued to the appropriate supervisor.?ÿ Almost a year passed and then the time came for the inventory people to canvas all of the many highway department field offices and check all the equipment against their paperwork.?ÿ This was always a nightmare because the bean-counters were there during the day...and the field crews (with all their equipment) weren't there during the day.?ÿ And then all of the unaccounted for junk the bean-counters couldn't put eyes upon became my responsibility to either come up with it, or turn in paperwork to show it had been retired for removal from inventory.?ÿ This entire exercise in futility usually took about two months out of each year of my life.
As it was all winding down I get a call one day from someone in "internal affairs".?ÿ These were the people that always caught (and prosecuted) the folks that filled up their personal cars with state-issued credit cards and other nefarious activities.?ÿ They wanted to "talk" with me and I didn't have the slightest idea why.
It seems as though inventory showed I was issued 3 laptops (since I signed for them).?ÿ Those laptops did not show up on any inventory.?ÿ This was surely because the supervisors that had them also had the ability to "get lost" when the inventory folks came poking around.?ÿ Running around all day trying to find lost plumb bobs isn't any fun...of course the supervisors never had their laptops checked!
Here's the "hoot".?ÿ Internal Affairs wasn't really interested in finding the laptops.?ÿ Their mindless investigation took off on a tangent trying to figure out how ONE man got issued THREE laptops...which were now unaccounted for.?ÿ?ÿAnd silly me, thinking this could all be explained and settled with a little communication, a few phone calls and something called "the truth"?ÿsomehow made me more culpable in their eyes!
I told them DP (data processing) had delivered to computers to my office and I signed for them since the survey managers were mobile all the time.?ÿ I guaranteed the laptops had been delivered to the proper personnel.?ÿ Then they got all upset because I had issued equipment (remember, it was MINE because I signed for it) to unapproved personnel.?ÿ I was officially forbidden to contact any of these 3 people because an official investigation was underway.?ÿ If I didn't allow a State Trooper and a Internal Affairs investigator to search my vehicle and residence for the laptops, they assured me they could get a real search warrant and warned things would get sticky for me after that.?ÿ It was hilarious.?ÿ I told them to knock themselves out and met them at my apartment.
Eventually (it took a friggin' month) all four of us were requested to show up at an "official" inquiry hearing.?ÿ The 3 survey managers had heard through the grapevine what was going down. They had me sitting on needles by ribbing me and saying they might tell them I had never given them any laptops!?ÿ?ÿWhat a funny bunch of guys...
Everything finally got settled.?ÿ I was reprimanded for signing for equipment that was meant for another employee.?ÿ They were reprimanded for accepting equipment that had been signed for by another employee.?ÿ The division head had to write and issue an official procedure as to how computer equipment was delivered and inventoried.
But I got back at them.
About six months later the department bought 6 beautiful shiny new Ash-tech static GPS receivers with all the junk that comes with them.?ÿ All the survey managers couldn't wait to get their hands on the receivers.?ÿ They were delivered one day to the shipping dock at the central office.?ÿ I refused to sign for them.?ÿ The carrier loaded the pallets back up on the truck and hauled them back to who-knows-where.
It took over a week to chase the gear down and for those guys to drive in and sign for all that equipment.?ÿ They were pissed at me for a long time.?ÿ Even my boss, the department head, told me that he didn't blame me for not signing for the delivery.?ÿ?ÿ😉
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Refusing to sign somebody's dotted line is a sure way to crank their handle the wrong way. Being a non-confrontational person, to get around that issue, I've signed a few non litigious things I didn't want to sign, like a salon's back-wax medical disclaimer, with a scrawl that's not my signature, and/or a nom-de-plume. You've given me an idea for another name to use.
It seems you lack a finely-tuned bureaucratic mind. All that hoopla, when all you had to do was make your field managers sign a receipt in triplicate for those laptops, and file the copies in the appropriate black holes of record keeping.
Some of us were born to detest bureaucratic BS and we didn't even know that it existed until much later.
The local county has a employee manual that is roughly 150 pages of gobbledygook, or so I am told.?ÿ A new HR guy was hired recently.?ÿ Within a month he tells the commissioners that the entire thing should be reduced to something like 30 pages or so.?ÿ They look at him as if he were nuts and started to wonder what kind of village idiot they had hired.?ÿ You never subtract policies, you only add to them.
@holy-cow Nearly 20 years ago the company for whom I worked was bought by a national company. We went from a "family" business where I knew the president and vice presidents, their wives and children, etc. If I needed a piece of equipment I went to the president, explained why I needed it, and how much it would cost. I had done this for the 18 years I had worked there. When the new company took over the president was kept on to operate as the manager of our office. The time came when I needed a firmware upgrade for our GPS system. I got the OK from the office manager (former president) and ordered the upgrade. When the bill came in the roof blew off. How DARE I order "software" without going through the main office (in Florida) and get the techs involved. Needless to say I wasn't long for that company, I had become a number with a name attached. That company has since been bought by an international company so I can't believe it has gotten any better.
Andy
Deja vu, all over again.
About 1982 I was with a company with many employees locally and thousands of others in various locations. However, we did much of our business is a very backwards manner. In fact, the powers-that-be had taken a very basic approach to anything involving the word computers. They were to be feared. Sensitive information might easily get out to those who might use it inappropriately. Everything typed was done so on typewriters with up to six sheets of carbon paper involved. Word processing was as foreign as kangaroo farming.
I had a large project where having a programmable calculator would be a wonder asset. We had some company-issued handheld calculators but absolutely none were programmable. My project had plenty of excess funds so I put in a purchase order to get an HP programmable calculator. The purchasing department went bonkers. They had never been involved in such an acquisition. The department head in purchasing took the paper work to the Director Finance and Administration who only answered to the Plant Manager. He, too, went bonkers. I received a call to get my butt up to his office immediately. He put me through a line of questioning for thirty minutes that would have made Joe Friday proud. How dare I attempt to purchase a computer that would not be compatible with the Trash-80 he had in his office. It might be a security risk. You know, you can't explain some things, especially when the other party does not want to be told they don't know much of anything. After about an hour and a demonstration of the type of work we would be doing with the programmable calculator he finally relented and allowed me to proceed with the purchase. BUT, I was to be the only one allowed to have access to it other than him upon his request.
When it arrived I spent a couple of hours demonstrating what it could do and what it could not do. Only then did he realize what a handy tool it would be and how it would not diminish his control over all things computer-based.
If things become clearer, how will you increase your power. But this has been an issue for a very long time.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
These stories tell the tale of how companies are born, find a measure of success, grow, become bloated, spawn new companies, and die.?ÿ ?ÿ?ÿ
I absolutely know what you're saying and, I have lived it on the private side. But, on the public side, the company never 'dies'. <insert cascading evil laugh track>
This story was really funny!
