Dear Mgmt. As a QA person you tie my hands. I can only say that your people are not following the extremely strict protocol required. Please stop favoring productivity over safety and quality.
This is a bit of an anti-rant. I got to participate in karma this week. Remember my horrible, terrible boss? If you don’t, he was the one who threw things at me, hit on me and most other employees and was eventually terminated (after I’d already left) because another former employee threatened a lawsuit.
Well…I’m not generally vindictive. And the above would seem like enough of a punishment for him being probably the worst human being I’ve ever worked for. However, having him apply for a position in my team as someone who would report directly to me really took the cake. Even better was getting a call from my higher ups (who usually do the first interviews), who asked me to stop by. Their first question was, “Do you know this person, and what the hell is wrong with him?”
Apparently he told them that he was too good for the job, but would take anything, secure in the fact that he was better than that. He totally creeped them out as well, and indicated that he had far more knowledge on the subject for which he would be an “expert” than he actually had (I used to have to do his media interviews for him or hold up notecards because he couldn’t be trusted to answer questions accurately). After speaking to him once, they refused to speak to him again and advised HR that they were better off canceling any and all interviews.
When asked for my feedback, I was totally (diplomatically) honest. Though it was hard not to throw in the part about him having his sex toys delivered to work. Okay, I actually told them that (I’ve been friends with these people for seven years). I couldn’t help myself.
I feel really bad for his family, but not bad for him at all. He can suck it.
“What the hell is wrong with him?”
“We’re not sure; I don’t think science has a word for it yet.”
Thanks so much for that story. I just love it when people bring justice crashing down on their own heads. Happened to two pathological liars* I’ve worked for.
For the rest of the day, I’m going to be singing “Instant Karma gonna getchoo…”
*One a Robert California-type ad exec, one a Mrs. Cunningham-type pastor (which is wrong on many levels…)
:D:D:D:D:D
Very very happy for you, that you got to experience this.
Thanks! I haven’t been able to wipe the shit-eating grin off my face for a few days.
That said, I almost wish they’d hired him on without my input because he would’ve crashed and burned so hard. He also would’ve been terminated within a couple of weeks.
What was funny was that he knew I was there and he’d managed to so delude himself about his own abilities that he thought I would put a good word in for him. He really thought I would support him, even though I told him very bluntly that he was the reason I was leaving when I left my previous job. Amazing. Just amazing.
That must have felt sooooo good. Kinda like the Schadenfreude I used to get when I heard about SG in his travels.
A decade. A DECADE!
Ten entire years have gone by, and my boss has still not learned how to use a filter in Excel!
Sigh.
Back when I worked with him before I had to “fix” his spreadsheet almost every week. Why? He’d somehow activated a filter and “lost” everything.
Get a panicked phone call last week; go investigate and yep - 10 years later a filter in excel is still a baffling ordeal.
I’ve got good news and bad news. Which ones do you want first?
The bad ones, the bad ones!
My current client’s internet filters now block anything classified as a “work of reference”. I guess I should count my blessings that back when I was writing manuals in French I still had access to Le Conjugateur and WordReference - now, RAE is out of bounds and what are you doing trying to look up a word, young lady?
Also, there’s a bundle of bureaucratese we filled up sometime in October and someone is checking now. Note that we were supposed to be off last friday: I’m still around because I got a 1-month extension, but for the rest, any time they send another email to which they expect an actual response is costing their company $$$.
The good news is that I’ve got an interview that I’m tremendously excited about. It’s for a job which would bring together my pre-Big Blue Database experience with the BBD experience, I’d get to have Official Subordinates (as opposed to, say, a dozen graduate and postgraduate students who don’t officially answer to me, or a room full of company VPs merrily typing away the data I’ve prepared for them), it’s got opportunities to grow, it will challenge me and hopefully not only my patience, and… did I tell you I’ve got an interview I’m tremendously excited about?
But don’t worry: it’s advertised as 50% travel, so if I get it, I promise to come back and rant when it turns out to be closer to 75-80%…
bad news/good news
Just had to lay off two guys, good workers great attitudes, but due to our development schedule we will not have work for all until next year. The shock / confusion when this stuff happens out of the blue is nasty.
Good news is we secured positions for them with another company we know the owner of, so long as they don’t fuck up a phone interview, they will be solid.
I wish I worked for you. 
A couple complaints that are years, or even decades, old, but were small enough that I didn’t harp on them until I realized that this is the perfect place for them:
Dear guy who quipped “you know you’re getting paid crappy when you make or lose more money in the stock market every day than you get paid.” Ummm, no, that usually means you’re middle aged and make enough that you can afford to contribute several percent to your 401K. So quit with your stealth bragging.
Duy “QA” guy providing functional input to my IT project: I’m impressed that you went on a trip to Europe for your 6 Sigma some-color-or-other Belt. And you are engaging in friendly chit chat about how your 6 Sigma guy took the class to a casino. Oh, wow, he showed you a no lose way to play the casino? Let me guess, by doubling your bet every time until you win? I’ve heard of that, let me secretly Google it while you’re talking. Me: “Yeah, Mr QA Guy, the Martingale method. It works most of the time, but in the long run it doesn’t pay because one bad run and you’ll lose everything.” QA Guy: “YEAH! IT’S A GREAT METHOD!” Howsabout I take your job, because how good at QA can you be if you are oblivious to statistics?
Come to think of it, the first guy was in QA, too. Hmmm.
Today one of my direct co-workers asked my fellow contractor which one of us performed a job function I’ve been doing on a regular basis for 8 months now. She asked me last week. And three weeks ago. It is listed on our project site that I do this. And I have an outlook folder in our shared mailbox with the name of the project on it under my name. This same person attempted to lecture me on Monday that I had not yet performed this monthly function this week when it is something I do the first week of the month. So how she had to ask who did this function on Tuesday is mind boggling.
A person who regularly files requests with us asked my fellow contractor a question about one particular system that has a singular quirk in how it is set up. My fellow contractor asked me how many times I have answered that question from this guy: FOUR TIMES in three months. He said this was probably the fourth or fifth time he had answered that same question in the same time period.
Seriously, WTF? Invest in some fucking post-it notes if you can’t remember this shit day to day.
Generally, the same questions being asked over & over again usually means that the documentation is inadequate. If you documented that answer, then next time you could just tell them “that’s covered in the documentation, on page xx”.
Yeah.
I’m gonna have to disagree with that one. Generally it’s because someone is too lazy to look it it up themselves. Much easier to ask Chimera. Again. And again. And again.
There are too many posts bitching about the same thing, many of them in this very thread by people we know do excellent documentation (Hi Flatlined!)
And they’ll continue until they’re forced to stop.
The way to force them to stop is for Chimera to NOT answer. Which can be done easily, if it is well documented – just tell them to RTFM (using business-appropriate language).
Since I am a contractor and this person is a permanent employee, it is somewhat ill advised to heap public scorn on them for their continued inability to remember something as basic as ‘who performs X function on our team’ when the documentation is right in front of their face.
So I’ll just bitch about it here. 
I must regretfully agree with this - that’s it exactly - it’s easier to just ask someone than look it up or take responsibility for finding a way to learn it or note it. People are lazy.
Lazy, and either profoundly stupid and/or willfully ignorant. I know exactly what’s in our training manual, because I wrote it from scratch. I stay on top of process modifications, system updates, nomenclature changes, version labels. I am often working on procedure documentation while I’m still doing user testing for this crap. I send out .doc and .pdf versions of the manual updates, plus I keep electronic copies on the shared drive, and reference chapter and verse when I send out emails with the new documentation.
Yesterday someone came to me with a question about a process that just got updated last week, and said she couldn’t find the instructions in her manual. Turns out she was using a SEVEN-YEAR-OLD version of the procedures, written for a software product that WE DON’T EVEN USE ANY MORE, which was NEVER EVEN IN her “edition” of the training manual, because she only started 18 months ago. Apparently she went to three other people for assistance before she came to me (HER TRAINER) and got multiple versions of the instructions from them, and just removed the current versions from her manual because she figured the “historical” versions were “more correct.”
I DON’T KNOW I CAN’T EVEN.
Because of course, an outdated seven year old document MUST be more correct than anything newer. No software EVER changes!
I would take that as a solid clue that this person is unsuited for the job.