Packaged departures

I’m not saying there’s a connection to me causing five layers of management to approve blowing nearly $18 of corporate funds on a computer mouse for me, but there is a raftload of people leaving the company permanently. Today the air in the cubicle/mushroom-farm around me was full of the sounds of packing tape being peeled off rolls and sealing up moving cartons.

Also, there were corks popping after people got back from a three-hour lunch.

Actually, the deal is that, back when the CEO announced that the company was, ah, not performing to expectations, part of the “fix” was to shed jobs like a python does skin. And in addition to unnumbered layoffs (still TBD), they offered retirement packages to (apparently) every employee with a combination of age plus years with the company that equals 65. And a lot of them have accepted the offer.

Not a lot of lead time on the leaving, either: the head of the engineering group on the product I’m working on announced to the team on the 27^th that he was “taking the package”. And this past Tuesday he told us that today is his final day.

And as of Tuesday he had no idea who would be stepping into his management shoes. All he knew was that the company had sent him a shipping label (he works remotely) to return his computer gear today.

One of my product management colleagues, barely 30 but a ten-year veteran with the company, seems to think that anyone who wouldn’t take a package and get out is an idiot. Since he otherwise is a person of extraordinarily positive attitude, I need to find out more about this.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll take a little sweep around the cube farm. See if anyone’s left a monitor or keyboard lying unattended.

¡Aí, Chihuahua!

I’m not sure whether this is animal abuse or what; have a look for yourself.

I will say, however, that when I was a kid my family had a Chihuahua mix that used to howl at “Malagueña Salerosa”. That was the only song she ever paid any attention to, but it got so that when the guitar intro came on, she recognized it. She’d stop whatever she was doing, cock her head & wait for the falsetto part. Then she would howl as though she were a great, big soulful old hound.

Not a word of a lie, here, mis amigos. 

Still—the best part of the video is the very last part. I hope that perro either got a great big treat or else peed on those shoes. 

Are you a manager or are you a mouse?

In case you’re wondering why US corporations seem sludgy and slow despite all the posturing and demands for taxpayer largesse over the past few years, let me tell you about my request for a mouse.

Yes—I requested a mouse. Because when I started this gig with one of the giants of telecoms, I was issued…a single, clapped-out laptop. (And it took more than a week for me to get set up in all required internal systems; but that’s a different kvetch.) No monitor, no external keyboard, not even a mouse stirred at my cubicle desk.

When I asked the jumped-up onsite “administrator” (read: coordinator) for my agency, she informed me that there was “no budget” for such accoutrements. This was her way of telling me, “we don’t want to spend anything on giving you basic tools for getting your job done; we’d rather keep every nickel possible, so just leave me alone.”

However, there was one conference call where I was walking colleagues through a lengthy document with a raft of tables in it, and I drove them completely up the wall because the finger pad on this POS laptop made scrolling impossible and the screen view kept jumping to different places in the document.

Following that painful experience one of those colleagues told me he would order me a mouse. Which he did—invited me to his cube to pick out what I wanted and he placed the order. Today he sent me the order trail from the procurement system.

And here’s where corporate America just swirls down the drain:

There are five levels of approval on the request for a $17.93 mouse. It’s not even a wireless mouse. I’m surprised they didn’t run it up to the CEO for check-off.

I know times are tough; and; two months ago said CEO announced that, to make up for a less-than-stellar quarter, the company will cut costs (CEO-speak for cut jobs) and blah, blah, blah. But to require five tiers of approval for a bleeding mouse is absolutely beyond the beyond.

I only hope the shareholders appreciate all the money saved by involving so many managers in the ordering of a tiny productivity tool.

The selfishest souls

Yesterday being Independence Day, I was thinking further about Congress, & the delta between what was envisioned more than 200 years ago & what we have today.

I do not venerate the Founding Fathers—they were human males with plenty of flaws; womanizers, failed businessmen, political manipulators & slaveholders as well as principled, thoughtful idealists. When they made the considered decision to overthrow British rule & build a new nation, they had to balance a lot of differing & conflicting commercial & philosophical interests.

They struggled with these issues & our first government, a confederation, didn’t work because all those interests kept the states from playing nicely with each other. (The Confederacy of 1861-1865 had exactly the same problem, which is why, for example, Georgia sent supplies to its own troops, but not to those of North Carolina or Tennessee. You may recall how that turned out.)

But the FF kept working on it, determined that this new government would succeed. This required that the representatives of each state sacrifice some interests toward the greater good of the nation.

The very location of the nation’s capital is an example of this: the Constitution stated that there should be a national capital separate from & therefore not owing to any individual state, but there was major disagreement about where that capital should be. The northern states wanted it in the north, the southern states in the south. Each region was afraid that the other would exercise undue influence over the national government—the north favoring industry, the south agrarian pursuits.

This may seem kind of petty these days, but it was serious business then. The north particularly objected to the capital being so close to the institution of slavery, & it was a contentious discussion.

Finally Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson & James Madison worked out the Compromise of 1790: northern states agreed to locate the capital along the Potomac River, on land donated by Maryland & Virginia, while the southern states signed up to retire all state war debts—by that time, mostly from the north. The north compromised on ideology, the south on finances.


Keep in mind that Hamilton & Jefferson couldn't agree on much of anything & entertained a cordial loathing for each other & their political philosophies. & yet they came to an agreement on this very contentious decision.

Now—can you imagine the Congressmorons currently sat in the Capitol, whining about having to work on the holiday, putting the common good ahead of their own special interests for anything short of someone holding an NRA-approved gun to their collective overcoiffed heads?

Sadly, I cannot.

& I cannot imagine the Founding Fathers ever imagined the Congress they put together with such care would become so self-serving & useless.

The native criminal class

As we celebrate the 235^th anniversary of driving the independence stake into the ground, with the issues of nearly ten years of two wars, the economy in a morass & a world to which we’re supposed to be the shining beacon of democratic hope, here’s what our national legislative branch is doing: squabbling about whether or not to pass bills that have no redeeming social value whatsoever.

I want to be positive—I do. With all our problems we are an amazing experiment in the belief that people of good will can in fact come together to create and live by reasonable laws, & thrive in the process. I come from the generation that really believed in that & it hurts me to feel the hollowness of that hope.

But I swear—every year our Congressmorons become more venal & petty than I’d thought humanly possible. Every year they bear out the truth of Mark Twain’s comment that they possess “…the smallest minds & the selfishest souls & the cowardliest hearts that God makes.”

I so want the nation to rise up & bury them in this message: grow the hell up. But they'd just find a way to misrepresent it.