#18 Are You a Knowledge Worker? (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

You know you're a knowledge worker when:

• You are an expert in computer systems that have been obsolete for more than two decades.
• You work in a cubicle and never see the light of day, but have to wear a tie/skirt/heels/dress shoes because of a company dress code. You can be fired for "abusing" the dress code.
• The "knowledge" you've accumulated in the last five years could be doubled in a two day business seminar, but the disused skills you've lost took a lifetime to earn.
• No one under the age of 30, and not employed by your company, can identify an application for your work experience.
• Your boss doesn't know how to do your job and wouldn't do it if he could.
• Your boss doesn't know how to do her job and gets promoted to a position she knows even less about. Her replacement is an tall, good-haired MBA grad in his first "real job."
• When you complain about the mindless tasks that get dumped on your desk, your boss writes "not a team player" on your salary review.
• When you don't complain about your boatload of mindless tasks, your boss writes "is not career-minded and does not make active contributions" on your salary review.
• The company offers a $5,000 hiring bounty for high school dropouts with Microsoft IS certificates and extensive Mortal Combat experience. HR sends you an email "thank you note" for recruiting a new coworker into your department.
• If it weren't for your coffee drip-line, you'd be asleep under your desk every morning by 9:30.
• Your office computer is so obsolete it has a teletype for a printer. Your kids' toy computer has features that you don't recognize.
• You boss, who doesn't know that spreadsheets can add numbers, has a 300MHz Pentium Pro with every bell and whistle known to nerddom. She uses her CDROM for a cup holder and asks you to print her email so she can read it.
• Your request to telecommute is denied because your boss is worried that no one will know what he does if you're not glued to your desk or attending his meetings.
• All of your hobbies are more technically demanding than your job.
• If you're a man over 40, urinating may be more technically demanding than your job.
• Regardless of sex or age, urinating is more satisfying than your job.
• Although you can't convince management to hire enough people to do the department's job, your job is identified as "mission critical" when the company shuts down between Xmas and New Years. You are "given" unofficial comp days, in increments of no more than one day per month (and no Fridays or Mondays) until mid-January when management reshuffles and all comp days are cancelled because they violate company policy.
• Because of your many years of experience and all-around importance to the company, you are asked to wear a clown suit at the company picnic. You make balloon animals for the junior fast-tracking executives.
• When you turn in your notice, your boss asks you to put off leaving for three weeks so you can train your replacement. HR doesn't notice that the two weeks notice you provided in your resignation letter has extended an extra week. You don't get paid for that week.
• You spend Sunday mornings looking at the job want ads, wondering how long it would take to learn to do any of the jobs you see listed.

All of your fears are unfounded. Every company with a CEO/CFO/COO or any executive with a title of "vice president of . . .." "director," or "executive manager of . . ." is totally clueless about the function of the business. Anyone with your valuable experience as a cog in the wheel of mindless bureaucracy will easily find a new home in one of the many replicas of your current employer. Don't worry, be happy.

April 1998

#17 Put on a Happy Face (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

The reoccurring theme I hear from Rat's Eye sufferers is "pretty hard on the MBA'ers aren't you, when are you going to say something happy?" Yep and probably in the next life.

I've misdirected my flames at the MBA'ers. I hit people when I aimed at institutions. Sorry about that. Honestly. There are lots and crowds of MBA'ers who deserve flaming, but oddly enough none of them are on this list. Wonder why? The MBA degree is just one idiot idea in a long history of educational institution idiot ideas. "Let's identify the least business-like organizations in the universe and have them teach kids how to manage businesses." Now there's a clever idea. Only academia would come up with something so . . . creative. Yeah, that's the word I wanted. If we are getting buzzed by aliens from superior planets, they must be laughing their asses off.

As a well-fed class of Americans, we're riding pretty high on our marginal economic success. Does the phrase "short-sighted" have any meaning these days? I guess there are reasons for hysterical laughter. Banks have to be loving our record credit card debt ratio. Some lawyers and accountants probably get a kick out of Depression quantity bankruptcies. The 40-some million people who are without health insurance must be somebody's wet dream. The fact that 20% of the children in the U.S. are living below the poverty line has to give sweatshop owners a lot of hope. "All that cheap labor and not a one of them old enough to bring a class-action suit." Those of us who are working and who do have health insurance have dimly accepted the golden handcuffs of middle class. "Turn in your aspirations and ethics at the door. This ain't no Sunday School." People are wealthier and more unhappy than anytime in modern psychological statistics-collected-in-malls history.

Bailing out of the economic reality zone, how about the happy world of politics? That's got to give us a lot of laughs. We have one side of the political isle, the Republicans, who are willing to destroy what little stability we have in the country to further their corporate welfare agenda. We have the other side, Democrats (in case you've been putting in so many hours at work you've forgotten what's what and who's who), who think eight years of Democratic leadership has kick-started the Great Society and the welfare state.

I worked for a company, only a few years ago, whose dimbulb executives insisted on "happy talk" at all meetings and public activities. "Whoopee! We're going broke and we only killed two patients this week." It doesn't take a crabby old man to figure out what motivates that kind of attitude. Ever hear of "golden parachutes?" The happier the working squids can be made to appear, the easier it is for the execs to con zombie investors into writing big "so long, it's been good to know you" checks. The hills and Aspen's mountains are alive with wealthy, retired execs who escaped just before the walls collapsed on the businesses they were supposed to be managing. Seven-eleven's are staffed with the people they used to mismanage.

The thing about the economy is that it seems to work independently of what is going on inside the economy. We do smart things, it crashes. We do dumb things, it booms. We do smart or dumb things, it does whatever the hell it's going to do, regardless. Bill Goodman said, of the entertainment industry, "Nobody knows anything." I say of the whole freaking world, "Nobody knows anything."

We're not smarter than the Japanese. That's not why their economy is crashing and ours is booming. It's just our time in the Midwestern weather pattern of world economics. We're still spending our kids future into oblivion. The national debt isn't shrinking, its growth rate has just slightly slowed. Social Security is still going down the tubes, and will be tubed about the time more of us than ever will be depending on it for our daily dose of dog food.

I'd love to spew happy talk. Honest. It's just that nobody's paying me to write happy talk, I'm as much a prostitute as anyone. So I write what I see until some of you start coughing up the big bucks.

April 1998

Managing Failure

A little while back, I spend a weekend working with two different mismanaged affairs: a training program and a computerized library system. Both organizations were cursed with the fatal flaw in the American workplace: gutless management.

From the top down, both organizations were blessed with a pretty decent workforce and management that had no clue how to manage or do any of the jobs in the business. A distinct lack of courage seemed to be integral to the management “style.” That manifested itself in an inability to “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” If all ultimatums will be moderated in real time, there is little point in listening to the original statements.

#16 Inventing or Stealing the Wheel (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day
I work for a company that has taken the NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here) to an incredible extreme. We're so proud of reinventing the wheel that we call spokes "endpoint clockwise-threaded drawn steel rods centrally affixed to the inner and outer circular attachments" (our terms for "rim" and "hub" would require a paragraph apiece). And, no, we still haven't decided what color the wheel should be for maximum consumer appeal. (If you don't recognize a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe reference, you disgust me.)

Our only exception to this behavior is when the Big Cheese of our industry (affectionately known as "Big M") has defined some completely idiotic practice as a "standard." When we hire away one of M's underachieving executives, we almost always adopt a few of those "standards," so that our products always reflect a consistent corporate incestry. But this doesn't really have an effect on the general atmosphere of doing things "our way." It, mostly, applies to Marketing and our irrational tendency to let MBAs mismanage critical tasks.
One of the most important men of the 20th Century, guitarist Jeff Beck, once said "Amateurs borrow, professionals steal." I think Mr. Beck was referring to riffs and blues songs not copyrighted by American black artists from the 1930's and 40's, but it applies to most everything. If it's out there, and it works, steal it, use it, sell it, and tell your lawyers you got the idea while you were chewing on a mildewed corner of a shower curtain.

Whatever you do, don't waste time trying to find a new way to do an old task. This isn't the way to true and original science, but it is the way to get things done fast and reasonably well. And that's the absolute best anyone can ever expect in MBA-land. Our bottom line is not "excellence," the bottom line is all there is. The best way to make sure you make money today, and a little more tomorrow, is to make "baby steps" (a term borrowed from a particularly irritating person in my employment history). Screw going for a homerun. Just get to first and keep working your way around the bases till you score. (We're still talking business here, but apply the rules where they fit.)

The easiest way to take those baby steps is to "reverse engineer" what someone else is already doing. "Reverse engineering" is the business term for steal it and say you didn't. The really cool thing about idea theft is that it is often considered polite. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." I am always polite, when it's convenient.

Business theft also so well entrenched that no one knows who stole what from who, anymore. Look at the Lotus vs Microsquash suit from a few years back. Lotus claimed that Excel™ had the "look and feel" of Lotus 123™. Those of us who've been fooling with computers for a few years/decades remember a strong resemblance from 123 and a rusty Apple-based spreadsheet, Visicalc. SuperCalc also appeared a bit before 123 (on CP/M machines) and was doing the job with similar commands and a lot more friendly user-interface. Borland's Quattro introduced three dimensional spreadsheets, also on CP/M machines, which Lotus immediately copied. After wasting a bag of taxpayer money, the court figured all this out and sent Lotus back to work, building awful software for a living.

If you ever wanted proof that the business world turns on theft, go to a car show. I did, a few weekends ago, and I spent the afternoon trying to find the new Volkswagen Beetle and the Dodge Prowler. It's not that I would ever consider buying a new car. I just wanted to find something in the show with a micron of individuality to use as a landmark in the sea of Acura clones. It's a wonder that all these doofus car makers don't join together into one giant company and save themselves the trouble of making all those repair parts. They could still label the cars they ship with their brand name. It's not like we can tell them apart as it is.

Business ethics, an oxymoron if there ever was one, has made theft part of its SOP. But that's probably not a completely bad thing. If it weren't for idea inbreeding, we'd all still be fooling with beads on sticks, or slide rules, or going barefoot so that we could keep track of more than ten cows. It's human nature. We see a neighbor doing something smarter than we do it and we change. I keep waiting for my neighbors to figure out how much time they're wasting mowing their yards.

And there is probably a good reason for the existence of the NIH Syndrome. Somebody still has to figure out what color the wheel should be. If so many goofs weren't keeping themselves so obviously worthlessly occupied, how would we be able to figure out who belongs on the "B-Ship?" The rest of you, go find something to steal and I hope you make enough money to retire someplace warm and sunny.

April 1998

Staying Alive for Who?

I had a heart attack in November of 2012. After a weekend stay in a local hospital and surgery that ended up costing my insurance company more than $100,000 and me about $10,000, I left the hospital with a bag of drugs and $200 worth of cardiac stent in my chest. Two months later, I had a “follow-up” appointment with my doctor and almost by accident he pointed me at a book about diet and heart problems, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do about It, by Gary Taubes. The discouraging thing that I learned from this book and subsequent research related to the references in Taubes’ book is that American doctors are uneducated, uninterested in healthcare, and mostly doing what they do out of greed and ignorance rather than a sincere attempt to provide a useful service to their community.

This is entirely consistent with something I realized at least 20 years ago. Sometime in the 1950’s American doctors were forced to decide if they wanted to be respected, honored contributors to society or be rich. Like all humans, 90% of doctors are weak, greedy, lazy, and stupid and they picked “rich.” Since then, community hospitals became privatized. Medical decisions began to be made at the upper levels of hospital administration, followed by the acquisition of locally owned hospitals by corporate conglomerates where those medical decisions became even less medical and more financial. The best part of this story is that most doctors didn’t even get rich out of their foolish, greedy, lazy decision. Even worse for docs, we don’t think enough of their owned-by-Big-Pharma opinions to listen to them if feel even a little slighted. Doctors, like car mechanics, are just a commodity and we’ll swap docs on a whim if we don’t like their manners.

If you take an interest in your own healthcare, you will find that information about why, where, and who is decidedly unavailable. Try asking your doctor about the model and brand of hip or knee replacement, cardiac, or any other medical device he’s recommending. You will find that it is treated as something that “is none of your business.” The doctor is only doing what he’s told to do, protect the hospital administration from lawsuits by keeping patients (now called “customers”) as stupid as possible. You’re worried about the government interfering with medical decisions? Fuck that. I’ll take a government bureaucrat over a corporate asshole any day. I can change my government. Nothing short of bullets or jail time will change a CEO’s decisions. CEO’s buy and sell governments like gumballs or popcorn.

About a month after my cardiologist follow-up, I decided that the medications I was given were so contraindicated for both my condition and my medical history that I gave them all up. Two of the six meds were contraindicated for patients with depression history: like me. Two of the meds were for high blood pressure and are contraindicated for use together: I do not have high blood pressure. Two of the meds were for early post-surgery use and should have been discontinued but weren’t because doctors don’t bother to learn much about the drugs they’re told to prescribe. Pretty much everything I learned about my cardiologist’s treatment was that he’s just going through the motions. He’s peddling drugs, because a drug company has bought his hospital administration, and devices because a device company sent him to an “educational seminar” in the Caribbean Islands last winter. If I die tomorrow because he over-prescribed me with contraindicated drugs and implanted a device that the FDA will recall in a couple of months, it’s no skin off of his neck because the whole US medical system is bought and paid for and I have about as many rights as a patient as a Tyson Farms chicken.

When I had my first heart attack, my only symptom was a neck ache that felt suspiciously like pressure in my carotid artery. The first doctor I saw, at my usual clinic on a weekend where I was seen by one of their reject “emergent care” docs who couldn’t accurately read a 12-lead ECG and mis-diagnosed my problem. After an overpriced joy ride to an emergency room in a glorified panel truck driven by a pair of goofballs who couldn’t insert an IV with a hammer if my veins were a foot wide and deep, I eventually was seen by a real doctor with real tools who found a “slightly elevated” enzyme “marker” that indicated possible cardiac damage. Three days later, I left the hospital worried about my new implant (based on 10 years in the medical device industry and way too much knowledge of how corrupt doctors and medical corporations are) and a whole lot poorer.

30 years ago, a friend had a heart attack and after he was revived with external defibrillation he told his doctors that if they ever did that again he would shoot them dead at the first opportunity. He started carrying a snub-nose .32 in his pocket just in case, afterwards. I think that might have to be my response. I just don’t think American doctors know enough about medicine to be helpful and I know they can be dangerous, stupid, and lazy enough to do some serious damage. Now that I qualify for Medicare, I’m not sure I want it.

#15 Athletes as Executives (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day
The baseball strike of 1994 and beyond, the expressed shock at Reggie Lewis’ supposed drug use, and the regular athletes-are-bad-guys editorializing in our local newspapers has made me reconsider what athletes are to our culture.  Doing that made me realize that athletes have been raised above the standard we require for government officials, corporate executives, professionals such as lawyers and doctors, and even coaches.  I guess this is one more sign that our country’s priorities are so screwed up that even sports no longer make sense.
I guess this resorting of occupational importance occurred because salaries for athletes are so widely known and so incredibly large.  The big money part applies to  a whole category of people who’s performance is a lot more important to the country, but we don’t hear about the money they make through the daily papers and television. 
Face it, if a basketball player gets paid a few million as one member of a dozen person team, it’s pretty obvious—even to a half-bright sportswriter—that the team owner is raking in a whole lot more money for that investment.  That is, simply, how business works.  But you never see sportswriters criticize owners for being overpaid, under motivated, and under talented.  Anyone who has looked closely at the problems in American business knows that the source of our market failures is consistently a management failure.  Why would a sports team’s failures be any different? 
At the top end of American business, we’ve had a collection of executive goofballs expose their ignorance and incompetence on a constant basis, but how often does a local newspaper or television station run an expose on those bozos?  Next to never, unless they rake off a few billion in a local savings and loan and the Feds are hauling them to jail.  The press doesn’t usually catch that until the company PR spokesperson issues a “we are not idiots and/or crooks” press release.  What kind of outrage do you think the press would express if a Fortune 500 executive spent a few months drying out with Betty Ford?  It happens all the time and the press says nothing, even though these people are responsible for thousands of jobs and millions of dollars.  The standard simply isn’t the same and you have to wonder “why?”
Athletes don’t get any kind of consideration for privacy or, even, humanity.  For one, they aren’t from the ruling class.  They are working class, for the most part, who make ruling class salaries.  Apparently, that salary covers a lot more than payment for athletic performance.  Judging by the standards sportswriters seem to hold for athletes, their salaries include an obligation to assure sportswriters with employment.  Athletes may also be our middle class frustration scapegoat.  The ruling class has always done its best to find us someone to point fingers at, other than themselves, so that they can avoid making a cultural contribution equal to the wealth they extract from the culture and the middle class. 
Athletes deserve some of this attention.  They are instantly rich, nearly the moment after leaving college.  Many of these instant millionaires never prove to be worth a small portion of their guaranteed income.  Even those who make valuable contributions to their teams and sport are more profitable than most small to medium sized businesses.  The typical first round draft choice will make more money in his first year of full time employment than most of us will earn in our lifetimes.  That has to create some resentment among the working class. 
But that is no different than the children of the ruling class.  They often inherit the equivalent of the lifetime earnings of a pro athlete superstar, without ever lifting a finger.  They can control incredible assets without ever knowing the slightest thing about the businesses they manipulate.  Thousands of lives can hinge on their spoiled brat whims.  Stock markets can rise and fall from the maneuverings of their portfolio managers.  And their personal habits are completely out of the realm of public inspection.  Their business transactions are never disclosed by the media.  Somehow, they completely escape the attention given to a first round draft choice, who at the very least is among the 1,000 most talented people in the country in his sport.  Why is that?  I really want to know.
April 1998

Fighting for Position

Apparently, I do not understand the purpose of “social networks.” I admit I’m a holdover from previous generations who learned to tolerate diverse opinions; even if those opinions were not respectable. Today, we’re either on one side or the other.

I got into a Facebook discussion about the purpose of our military over the last 50 years with a kid who seems to believe that having served in our military gives him a “higher power” platform for his opinions.

After disagreeing with his devout opinion1 that any military service gives the service member some sort of religious standing, he wrote: “Ah, I see you very well now, Thomas. You're a one-note choir without anything to add to _this_ topic unless it involves knee-jerk opposition to your military and everything it does, stands for, or is capable of. You disregard even the possibility of something valuable or noble in soldiers, whom you see as lesser citizens -- even lesser humans -- than yourself. You blithely generalize that hundreds of thousands of your fellow American citizens would be ‘perfectly happy’ to shoot you up on any order, because apparently you can see into their heads and hearts better than can their peers.

  “If you say it loud enough and long enough, to enough people, that may make it true -- for you. Some of us have a broader experience of fellow soldiers, and expect them to comport themselves faithfully and professionally because that is more than their job. It is their sworn oath, undertaken on your behalf and mine.

“You've shown yourself a condescending bigot, sir, and have confused your personal contempt with understanding.”

I’ve heard this definition of “bigot” before, but failed to understand the intended meaning (something considerably different than the traditional Webster’s definition). I’ve heard it from biker gangbangers, when I disrespected their “right” or moral authority to terrorize the general public. I’ve heard it from modern country musicians after I questioned their rural authenticity, when the only thing they know about the country is that audiences in the country are insufficient to support the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed.

With Jack’s response, all of a sudden, I got it. What “bigot” means is that I am unwilling to submit to their threat of banishment or worse if I don’t, at least, pretend to be afraid of them. It gives them a position from which any sort of violence, from cyber to physical, can be justified. It’s obvious where members of our military would learn this response.

The good thing about these probably-short-lived social networks is that disparate people and opinions have the opportunity to break across social, physical, economic, and spiritual barriers. The sad fact is that we Americans have lost most of the capacity to see across those lines because of our personal history (what you would call "bigotry"). While the technology our country has concentrated on developing has been massively destructive to the world, our democracy, and our nation's future, it's nothing new. Failed empires have pounded on their chests exciting young men to useless, amoral, destructive wars, invasions, and to overreact to oversized (relative to real) threats as long as humans have recorded history (and likely beyond).

It is no surprise that men and women who have given a portion of their lives and sanity to this pretense of national "defense." Our discussion has reminded me of friends returning from Vietnam who desperately wanted those who didn't engage in those atrocities to "honor" their sacrifice. I can't express how sad I was for them and for the many wasted lives resulting from the damage they  suffered, physically and mentally. Some good friends returned from that war so angry and incapacitated that they never recovered. This insistence on "honoring" the warrior even if the war was evil seems to be a new thing. My father's generation spent a lot of energy trying to forget what they were forced to do in WWII. Korean War vets were the first guys I knew who had a sense of desperation about getting credit for having done something questionable or awful.

Vietnam and Iraq vets have a lot in common in that they both have massive sins to live down and want to be told they did something less awful than their senses witnessed. I get that, but can’t help them with their illusions of morality. They fell for the oldest trick in human history and want to be comforted for their error. There is a reason the military wants young men for this task and it is not because they are “the best and the brightest.”

  As for my belief that more than enough of our current members of the military would be “‘perfectly happy’ to shoot [me] up on any order,” I think history has already demonstrated that to be likely. This is very much the old Churchill question about prostitution. Based on the response of too many members and ex-members of the military to any sort of dissent from within (including the article from which this discussion originated), I think Newspeak is the only language the military can handle. My phrase was “most military members" will be perfectly happy to fire on American citizens if they are so ordered.” We could debate their happiness, but I have no doubt that at least 50% of the current mercenary military would fire on order. From what I’ve seen, military happiness is a rare condition, so they’d be as happy as usual, at worst.

A discussion that includes the possibility that our oversized military has often been used to defend interests other than that of the average citizen is off limits and “unpatriotic.” However, there is a good reason why police departments give priority to military vets and it is not a politically correct reason; it is because they will follow orders regardless of morality, legality, or any other rational argument. I suspect in my lifetime, we will find that the “volunteer army” will be volunteering for some pretty nasty domestic duty.

1 The words that inspired Mr. Lewis to such irritation were, “. . . the original post used several examples of men (like John Kerry) who openly opposed the militaristic bend of the nation of the time as cowards and called soldiers who disguised their identities as cowards. Clearly, the ‘thought’ is that if you're in uniform, you should conform. If the JCS comes to congressional hearings and television interviews in uniform to promote their wars, it seems disingenuous to disallow their opponents the same ‘credibility’ platform. ‘Most military members’ will be perfectly happy to fire on American citizens if they are so ordered, so using that generality doesn't make me feel much safer in my opposition to the military.” [NOTE: For the math-disabled, “most” means more than 50%.]

#14 Minding the Store (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day
Lately, there has been a lot of yak being tossed around about the lack of useful employees. Supposedly, there is a nationwide shortage of engineers, computer scientists, technicians, and bottle washers. Congress has taken time off from it's inane examination of the President's alleged hillbilly sexual activity to wring wrinkled hands and whine southern accented whines about why we need to loosen up immigration so that their rich buddies can free up more money for political contributions. CEO's have taken a few moments away from their golf clubs to lecture grade school administrators on how to turn out higher quality employees. You'd think this was the real deal, if there was some action following all the whining.
Those of us at the bottom looking up know there are enough MBAs to make sure that every product built in the US has had the quality siphoned away in the interest of improving make-believe bottom lines. As a nation, we have enough lawyers, accountants, and doctors that schools are closing the doors on those departments to make room for more MBA drones. There is even a boom in "Human Resources" programs in those mislabeled "prestigious institutions" of purposeless learning. Other than school administrators and government employees, it's tough to imagine a more perfect waste of time and paper than that hopelessly goofy crowd. Clearly, we are still in good shape, skilled employee-wise, if we can toss off valuable education time in these two goofball-filled areas.
If this employee "shortage" actually required the production of any useful activity there would have been some kind of economic reaction. In case you were worried that the state of the union was about to go bad, don't. Fortunately for the ruling class, the critical employee shortage is in the area of skilled technical types who will work for minimum wage. It's not like companies are rethinking allocating money from brain-dead execs to areas that actually have functions. We haven't even tightened up the obvious stuff. We're still subsidizing the higher education of technical folks from every country in the world, with our "public schools."
Companies still expect to be able to find all the technical skills they need by snagging employees from other companies and countries. Public K-12 education is still doing its swan dive into the dumper and absolutely no attention is being paid to root causes or meaningful changes in how teachers are educated or managed. There may have been no other time in history when the status quo was more well stuck in the mud.
The surest sign that there are more than enough hirable people in the job market is that next-to-nobody seems to be thinking about making companies more attractive to stick with. You'd think that being obviously employee-hostile would be the first thing sent down the sewer in an employee's market. Other than a few strangely logical renegades, most company policies seem to be going the exact opposite direction. This, too, ought to make you secure in the knowledge that the powers-that-be-stupid are safe from having to work for a living.
If anything is happening, companies are getting to be way less fun places to hang out. The childhood scourge of freedom and individuality, the dress code, is more entrenched now than since the days of when the words "Big Blue" actually described a major company. HR snoops are prowling the halls, making lists, entering snide comments in employee records, and ensuring that work is about as pleasant as dental surgery.
Phrases like "snappy casual day" reinforce HR's power over the functional classes. Studies that show dramatic improvement in productivity and job satisfaction, when business attire is practical and comfortable, have no effect on these power freaks. In fact, they seem to get a kick out of flaunting the idiocy of their rules and policies. Do you think this would be the case if company profits were really pressed to become efficient?
And it just goes on and on. More people are stuffed into positions where they are required to eat lunch at their desks. Don't even think about taking a break (unless you smoke, but that's another story). The pitiful few who don't have MBAs are doing jobs that used to be done by small departments. While mismanagement is whining about the lack of skilled labor, their own employees are spending so much of their lives at work that they don't have the time or energy to keep their skills current. Sayeth the goofy execs, "Which is why we need to import more workers from other countries."
Somehow those countries, with whom we aren't competitive, have skilled employees to spare. How do they do that?
In the midst of this mythical skilled labor shortage, management has shown a well tuned disregard for employees personal lives and aptitudes. Henry Ford and the original HR goon, Harry Bennett, would be proud; and amazed. The list of primitive and mindless mismanagement exercises are almost as impressive as they are repressive.
Time clocks have made a comeback for non-exempt and exempt labor. Those beloved monitors of employee existence are being introduced under the guise of "project monitoring." But we know what they're for, don't we? There isn't a chance in the world that mismanagement could do the math required to actually put project expense data to good use. They are operating at the peak of their abilities when they add up the hours to see if we're at work 40 long ones a week.
Wackiest of all is when HR recruits IS into their making-life-miserable programs. While the IS guys are supposed to be the very people that business needs more of, HR has sucked them into monitoring how much time users spend on the Net, messing with email, or ineffectively using those wonderful Microsquash Orifice tools that we all love so much. You'd think they'd spend at least as much time making networks do something predictable and practical, but you'd probably be wrong. So far, no one has ever found a practical use for networks.
It would be really cool if I could list as many positive things about the current state of employment, but I'd be lying if I did. When business life is bad for salaried office workers, it's a lot worse for hourly workers. Worst of all for hourly manufacturing workers. And worse yet for the hundreds of thousands of temps, who have about as much protection from crappy management as rats get from wolves.
The real mystery is why do all those skilled labor types from other countries want to get our green cards? Is it really possible that their mismanagement is worse than ours? That's a sobering thought. If it's true, what are we worrying about?
March 1998

#13 If I Can't Do It, It Must Be Easy (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

The title of this piece, "If I Can't Do It, It Must Be Easy," seems to the strongest of all modern management beliefs. A zillion years ago, good managers said things like "I'd never ask anyone to do a job I wouldn't do myself." Not anymore. Or maybe, and more likely, there aren't any good managers left to say things like that. Today's managers usually don't know what they would do themselves, mostly because they aren't capable of doing much of anything. More often than not, they're proud of this characteristic.

The new pack of MBA-de-educated, fast-tracking managers believe everything from performing a useful function to leading a meeting is a task unworthy of their "skills" (a term left totally undefined in MBAville). If nothing else in our current economy tells us that we're living beyond our means, the vacant lot of management abilities in American companies ought to do the job. It's zombie-land in the offices with windows. A decade ago, we complained about bosses without people-skills. Today, it's tough to find any sort of skills in the executive suites.

Where is Lee Iacocca now that he might actually be useful? Man, I never thought I'd be saying that!

Which reminds me, what do you get when you glue a pair of shot glasses to an executive's ears? An overpriced, unrepeatable Hubbell telescope.

Most companies could lose all of their management staff in a plane crash and not know they were missing for months. The outside world's first clue that the business was unhelmed would be the company's rapid increase in efficiency and profitability.

The perfect beauty of the MBA-to-Management fast-track is that it takes absolutely no ability or experience or any identifiable quality to make the big bucks (other than being tall, attractive, and having good hair). Buy a degree from a prestigious MBA factory and you're on your way to an executive lifestyle, regardless of the disasters you create along your way. In fact, I've seen a few of these dweebs completely hose up a company and get hired and promoted (for a job well done?) to another company in the same industry. What an awesome example of the phrase "poison pill."

In mismanagement's simple world, there is no downside to simple solutions for complex problems. Need to cut costs? Whack out a budget with smaller bottom line numbers. Need to shorten production times? Slash the schedules. Management's blissful ignorance is the total lack of consequences to impossible demands. Someone will either "make it happen" (in the words of the ultimate MBA'er, Captain Picard of the Failed Enterprise) or convince the dim-bulb execs, on the next rung up, that it did happen.

Finally, a side effect to this low-road route to success is that someone has convinced these New Age Mismanagers that any skill they don't have isn't worth having. If God is in the details, these fools are the ultimate atheists. As a dean of Harvard's School of Business once said, "Details? We don't need no stinking details."

The mass of today's executives seem to believe that the difficult part of every task is saying "make it so." These corporate wood worms believe that "seeing the big picture" is some kind of special skill inherited only by the ruling class. "Bring me your poor and wretched ideas, so that I can wave my arms over them and blessed they shall be." Once the arm waving is done, it's back to the golf course, the three-martini lunch, the Waikiki sales branch inspection, or a ten day quality seminar in Paris.

Sometime between ten minutes and a week after making the grand pronouncement, the doofus with the good hair will be back wondering why it "isn't so." The time period has more to do with his recreation schedule than the complexity of the project. No excuses are acceptable. It doesn't matter if you don't have the tools, training, human-power, or time. Since Mr. Corner Office thinks he has performed the hard portion of the task, in his mind the rest of the task is simple grunt work. And you are the grunt.

In a Priority Mail(TM) ad, the Postal Service said it all for me, "The smartest executives all have something in common. They love a no-brainer."

And the rest of us know why.

March 1998

#12 We Don't Need No Stinkin' MBAs (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

U.S. News just published their special on the "best colleges" in the country. That didn't bother me. I can hold my nose and get past the idea that status mills like Harvard and Yale are considered capable of teaching useful information. It does amaze me that hiring track-proven morons like Henry Kissinger to teach subjects like "How to Buy Peace with Taxpayers' Money" doesn't have some effect on credibility. I can live with it, though.

While I scanned the magazine in the checkout line, I struck a paragraph that about did me in. I was still gagging as I turned over my credit card to the kid behind the counter and she looked at me like I'd just handed her a "Catch Ebola Free" card. The phrase that nearly killed me said "advanced professional degrees like MD and MBA. . ...." An MBA is a professional degree? Obviously, the term "professional" has hit bottom without a single bounce. I can hardly breathe, just trying to draw parallels between doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, plumbers, electricians, sanitation engineers, and . . . MBAs?

I don't understand MBAs. I don't know why people get 'em. I don't know why other people hire 'em. I don't know why the rest of us don't avoid working for companies that hire 'em. You'd think, based on history and experience, that "MBA" would be something a person would have embossed in scarlet letters on their prison shirt; or branded on their forehead.

A few decades ago, when I was scrubbing my way toward a night class engineering degree, I often wondered which class would be the one to force the knitting needle through the nostrils and into the brain. From an engineering technician's viewpoint, it seemed to me that engineers were educated to make fundamental errors that doomed their projects and products to mediocrity. Many of the engineers I'd worked with were fairly intelligent, but they regularly made incredibly unintelligent engineering decisions. When I finally found my way into 400-level engineering classes, I discovered that there were very few natural technical people left. The ones who were still around were the guys who had been convinced that "engineering is a good job." Not the ones who were burning to build something.

I'd be amazed if anyone ever went into an MBA program because she was burning to create a great company that provided great services or products. MBAs start their college careers aiming at "a good job" (lots of money and no work) and end their business careers making sure that nothing is left for whoever comes after them. The only other "profession" I can think of that resembles MBAs is "politician."

Just about every mid-sized-to-large company in the USA is being overrun by MBAs. (Very few small companies can afford MBAs, since their purpose is to survive and provide their owners with a profit.) Engineers are getting an MBA as their "advanced degree." Lawyers are adding an MBA to their credential list. Accounting, Human Resources, Computer Science, science, and even Fiz-Ed majors are collecting an MBA to tack onto their business cards. I'm pretty sure, we're all supposed to be impressed by this addition to the list of their expertise.

I'm not. I spent half of my life in college. I fought my way through administrative obstacles in five different schools. I never, ever, not once, heard a college student say, "When I get outta here, I'm gonna start up a business and run it just like this college. I never had better service. Never met more competent administrators. This place is a model business! I wish my school sold TV's, I'd never see the inside of a Best Buy ever again." Nope, I never heard that kind of statement one time in 25 years of attending college. I'd be amazed if such a stupid idea ever crossed anyone's mind.

What I want to know is, if colleges are the polar opposite model for how businesses should be run, how do colleges have the gall to teach "Business Administration?" Isn't this a lot like asking a white supremacist to teach cultural diversity? Why would anyone with a worm-sized brain have any interest in someone who was taught how to run a business by a college? God knows, but big business does have a strong lemming tendency. When one brain-dead MisFortune 500 company gets a little press for a really moronic idea, the other 499 jump off the same cliff without a moment's consideration.

One of the primary things I've learned from whoring myself across seven states and five industries is, when it comes to managing a business, "if these idiots can do it, anyone can." Or, as William Goldman said about the film industry, "nobody knows anything." This has never been more true, than since MBAs started taking over the world.

March 1998

#10 Revenge and Clear Blue Skies (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

Here in Minnesota, a lot of math-impaired citizens are celebrating Hubbie Humphrey's kid's defeat of Big Tobacco in one of our state's famous kangaroo courts. The numbers, at least, are impressive. Right away, a whole bunch of lawyers are getting a half billion dollars for winning this suit. Twenty years from now, when a billion dollars will buy a nice, slightly used, Nissan minivan, the citizens of Minnesota will finally have had the pleasure of seeing all of their share of the tobacco settlement sucked up and blown away by the usual state government incompetence and corruption. Whatshisname Humphrey is crowing about how this is a "blow for public health" and waving that flag in his bid for the Minnesota governor job.

I want to make sure you aren't being fooled. It's my job.

First and most important, nobody really cares about public health. That's a universal, unless you count the people who are already sick and stuck in hospitals where they can't vote. Since they can't vote . . . draw your own conclusions. If the public health were an issue, these government goofs would have made smoking against the law as soon as doctors and scientists told them smoking caused fatal diseases, thirty years ago. Instead of using tobacco sales to produce billions in "sin tax" revenues, tobacco would have just joined the long list of illegal drugs and its users would have gone underground. That didn't, and hasn't, happened.

The tobacco lawsuits aren't about reimbursing the public savings accounts for the medical costs of tobacco addiction. If they were, state and federal governments would have saved all the tax money they were collecting on tobacco to use for those costs. As usual, for the last fifty years, the government has been throwing a party for itself with that extra "revenue" (a bureaucratic word for money stolen from the public).

The public bans of smoking aren't about protecting public health from second-hand smoke, either. The fumes spewed by internal combustion engines, factories, and the smoke blown by the media and government officials has be at least as toxic as tobacco smoke. Nobody's getting sued for that. Non-smokers have been choking on second-hand smoke for a couple hundred years and, until there was money to be made, no one gave a damn about our discomfort or asthma attacks.

Get it straight. The lawsuits are about money. The militant anti-smoking activity is about revenge.

For almost 100 years, smokers have had the upper hand. I can remember going to concerts where the smoke was so thick that the stage lighting only showed you where you would see the band, if the air wasn't opaque. Smokers have probably cured more alcoholics than AAA, keeping non-smokers from being able to taste beer or mixed drinks weaker than Everclear. Smokers have driven non-smokers from political conventions, bars, public bathrooms, business offices, and their own homes. When you think about it that way, it's possible that smoking created independent politics, bottled beer, pissing in the alley, home businesses, and outdoor recreation. Anyway, non-smokers have been looking for a way to get even since the invention of the match.

It isn't easy to find a way to get even with a smoker. They're obviously suicidal, so most threats are empty. They were clearly born in a smoke-filled, carpet-burnt barn, so threatening to tell their mothers isn't going to carry a lot of weight. Anyone who smiles and says "excuse me" after burning a hole in your knee with stray ashes won't be affected by Ms. Manners' quotes. If you aren't afraid of being beat up by a revolting smoker, you have to be afraid of their revolting mouth odor. Personally, I'd rather lose teeth than inhale smokers' breath. There's nothing left for non-smokers to do but to bring out the heavy weapons: lawyers.

In my young, impressionable, dumb as a rock days, I believed that lawyers were "a bad thing." Not anymore. A year ago, a real estate lawyer saved me from having to live under a rock. Without lawyers, comedy would be dead. The only way to hear a politically incorrect joke, these days, is to make the victim a lawyer. In the medical business, no one listen to patients unless they talk through a lawyer. But best of all, my wimpy asthmatic lungs are being saved from premature mechanical replacement by a pack of multi-millionaire Minnesota lawyers with nothing but good intentions and God on their side. I've changed, see? Now I'm old, impressionable, and dumb as a rock. Change is good.

A few short decades ago, Libertarians, Republicans, and teams of business interests and personal freedom fanatics would have shouted down the anti-tobacco campaign. Not anymore. It's payback time. Smokers are outnumbered, almost 5 to 1, and non-smokers are taking back the air we breathe. We're saying, "To hell with your free choice. I want to go anywhere I want to go, without having to breathe burning tobacco. You are banished to the smoking section of the darkest alley in town." By the time this is over with, tobacco company execs will be moon shining Virginia hillbillies, hand-rolling cigarettes in back of tarpaper shacks. Smokers will have to find a way to spontaneously combust, seconds after stuffing a fag into their mouths, to keep from being arrested. Even then, the ashes will get a littering citation.

That's the way I see it. Change is good. Smoking is bad. It's a simple world. This is a "personal space issue" that has nothing to do with building a safer, kinder, gentler world. It's a good thing most lawyers are also fat people. Otherwise, I'd worry about being their next target. Ever sit next to a sweaty, fat guy on an airplane?

May 1998

#9 What We Are Paid For (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

After 30 years of what many people would call "full employment," I finally figured out one more aspect of corporate life. Just call me "slower than a California environmental cleanup."

Twenty five years ago, I noticed a nasty connection between unpleasant, high-paying jobs and a self-destructive, self-reward system that closes off the worker's escape options. When I was young and much smarter, I vowed to avoid falling into that trap. But, either the trap has been reset much more cleverly in recent years or I've grown a lot dumber in my dotage.

Back when I was a newly educated, struggling to survive on slightly above minimum wage, electronics technician, I was often tempted to give up the struggle and become a meat cutter in a packing plant. As "skilled" beige collar labor, I was earning about $2.00 an hour. As an unskilled, unionized, packing plant employee, I would have made $8 to $11 an hour. $4,000/year vs. $22,000/year (before overtime). Seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it?

It wasn't that clean a decision then and it isn't now, believe it or not. There was a lot of economic turmoil in the 1970's. Jobs were hard to find and easy to lose. A big section of the country was in a killer recession-depression and there seemed to be no way to predict when it would end. It was tough to imagine it might ever end.

I had no trouble imagining the collapse of unions and union jobs, though. I'd done some work, installing automated manufacturing systems, in a packing plant and had experienced, first hand, how desperate those people were to hang onto their over-paid, unskilled jobs. I also knew men and women who worked in packing plants. I saw the piles of expensive toys, big houses, and new cars they bought (on credit) to reward themselves for suffering their miserable days at work. The more they rewarded themselves, the deeper in debt they went, and the more locked into their awful jobs they became.

So I stuck out my attempt to find a trade (electronics engineer) and become skilled (and mobile) labor. For the most part, I stayed on that track and was happy about the attempt, until I stumbled into the medical device business in 1992. I think, at that moment, I moved into the 1990's "knowledge worker" category. I'm pretty sure that "knowledge worker" is the term that Management uses for "idiot who sold his/her soul for a mindless, repetitive, skill-less, pointless, overpaid clerical position." The meat-packing job of the 90's.

I think the "overpaid" and the "skill-less" parts are most important. I'm pretty sure I can teach a monkey to use a Mac or a Win95 PC. I'm also sure I'd have to give a monkey a lot of peanuts to get him to stick with it. Just like a "knowledge worker."

Here we are, finally, at the point.

As Cubicleville "knowledge workers," we are mostly paid to tolerate boredom and repetition. In exchange for a little extra cash, we often give up practical, employable skills, and the freedom of knowing that we can easily find similar, equal paying work anywhere in the country. We exchange owning a trade and a secure future for a few extra dollars, today, and the insecurity of knowing that we'll be starting over from scratch if we ever change jobs. Because one thing is forever true: any skill or knowledge that you have and don't use, you'll lose. So think about this, when you take a crummy, mindless job for a little extra cash, you're going to need that money later when you're starting over in an unskilled, entry-level job. The "knowledge" you are working with is not worth knowing.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

February 1998

#8 Defending . . . Microsoft? (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

I wrote the following letter to Infoworld magazine, after reading a really stupid article about how awful it was that Microsoft dominates the computer world:

Software vendors are in a unique position in the world of products.  They too often rely on the idea that repackaging a product is all it takes to erase the bad memories of a previous release.  I have used a product for the last two years and two upgrades in which I recently found a catastrophic bug.  This program is a time management tool, telephone book, and kitchen sink.  The bug was that, occasionally, the program decided to lock out the ability to add pages to the phone book; limiting the user to 38 phone numbers listed under than letter of the alphabet.  This is a serious drawback when the program decides to limit the number of “S” entries.  I called the vendor and was told that the bug has been fixed on the new, major revision of the product and, for a fee, I can obtain this revision.  There is no cure for my version of the product.  Maybe the majority of this market would think that is a good deal.  The vendor did offer a discount on the revision.  I didn’t take him up on the offer because I have lost faith in that vendor’s commitment to product quality and customer satisfaction.  In fact, I’m not convinced that he is capable of producing software that will work reliably and I am convinced that, if it doesn’t, it will be my problem.  So, I’m back in the market for a program that does what this program did for me.  I won’t invest any more money in this company’s products.

As much as we, and I, beat on Microsoft for being the neighborhood bully (bigger being badder), you have to give their customer service credit for being a benchmark that other companies have to, at least, equal.  In the past year Fox Software’s service was drifting into mediocrity.  After using that product for six years, I was starting to consider dBase IV because of my past experiences with Borland’s customer service.  I was reluctant to update my systems with Fox’s newest revisions because every update seemed to tangle me up with a new bug.  Their technical support personnel were no longer serious programmers and it could take one or two weeks to get a reply to a fax or telephone message.  Those replies were often very close to useless and two more days would be lost waiting for another attempt. 

Even Microsoft’s bug fixes do more than just correct problems.  In my experience Microsoft is more likely to be adding minor, but useful, features than correcting programming mistakes.  And not only do they send the upgrades for free, but they ship them Federal Express 2nd day air. 

February 1998

#7 Training, Who Needs Training? (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

Thirty years ago, I worked for the City of Dallas (Texas) Water Department. That was my first "professional" job. I was a meter reader. For two weeks, a senior meter reader and I hiked my routes. He showed me how to find meters, how to read them, how to avoid angry customers who thought I was going to shut off their water, and how to protect myself from dogs. When he set me free, I was ready to do the job. For the next 2 1/2 years, I read an average of 350 water meters per day and averaged under 3 "errors" (valid customer complaints) a month. Looking back, I think that was the first, and last, adequate job training I've received from a business. And it was a city government job.

Since then, I've been a technician, an engineer, a supervisor, and a manager in a half-dozen industries and a about that many companies. Each of those industries and companies had some sort of "training department." Several of those companies had training procedures that attempted to describe job tasks. Not a single one of those companies put together anywhere near the quality of training they needed. Most of the training programs were nothing more than half-hearted, butt-covering games whose purpose was to fool OSHA, FDA, customers, or some simple-minded executive.

In an economy that claims to be begging for a skilled and educated labor force, you'd think someone would be making a serious effort to build and keep that sort of labor in the company. Not many are. Why the heck is that?

For one, it's expensive and, for two, it requires management planning. Since most businesses are wasting piles of money fooling around with training, Number One can't be the hold up.
But Number Two is pretty much an oxymoron. Management Planning. It's almost impossible to imagine those two words in the same sentence, paragraph, or book. The usual substitutes (management scheming, management manipulating, management abuse, management incompetence, etc.) don't do the job. Training that has a purpose and has to meet real requirements takes a load of planning. Short and long range planning.

Short Range: You have to decide what kind of skills you want your employees to have at the end of the training program. You have to figure out who can teach those skills. You have to sort out who will be able to accept and learn and retain the skills you want to have taught.

Long Range: You have be smart enough to know that a percentage of your labor force will be in training and not available for labor. You have to decide how to make training attractive so that people will want to let go of their daily tasks and work for new skills. You have to figure out where your company is going and what kind of skills it will need when it gets there.

And so on.

Absolutely none of the above is taught in an MBA program. For my money, absolutely no management skills are part of anyone's MBA program, but that's another issue. The first requirement for sorting out those questions is an understanding of the company's technology, the company's markets, and the company's future. There's that damn leadership thing, again. It's pretty easy to see why it's in such short supply.

Just for kicks, I did a search on the word "training" on my company's intranet. Not a single hit. A company with nearly 2,000 employees doesn't have a single active, advertised, on-going training program. Sure, there is a lot of window-dressing, remedial training going on. There are a few technical classes offered to a few engineers. Human Resources always seems to be treating itself to off-site classes in "How to Screw Over the Most People with the Least Effort." Since company networks never work and managers can barely find their computer power switches, IS "professionals" can always convince Management that they need more training. But, for the most part, my employer is a mirror of my business education experiences of the past.

So what all these execs are whining for is not trainable employees, but pre-trained employees. Ideally, self-trained employees. Perfectly, self-trained in the exact tasks needed employees. What they get are a few people who are self-motivated enough to teach themselves skills that will enhance their personal opportunities; and a lot of people who learn enough to get by. The first group won't be generating any loyalty for the company with their efforts. The second are too busy getting by to think about what happens after lunch.

For employees, the key is to get into one of the minority fields that management thinks is worth training. Attract just enough attention to get yourself into regular, general purpose classes that will make you a more valuable employee to all employers. Avoid any sort of "job training" that will make you an expert in your company's most obsolete functions (never, never, ever learn anything about IBM's System 36). And be sure to list all of the industry training programs you've attended in your resume. You never know when some idiot executive will be looking for a free lunch.

February 1998

#6 Musak; short for "Music? Aak!" (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

And now, for something really different.
Let me tell you a story about my youth. When the sun was little-tiny and the moon wasn't even born yet, things were a lot different than they are today.

This is back when my knees didn't hurt and I could pee my name in the snow without soaking my socks and I was absolutely certain that I'd never take a job that required me to wear long pants, let alone a tie. Back in those days, the mark of being a resident of Geezer-ville was when your favorite songs were playing in the grocery store. It was an absolute truth that you were out of it, old as dirt, obsolete as a Liberal Arts major, when you stepped into an elevator and heard a song you recognized.

It was comforting to know, deep in my bones, that I'd never have my wrinkles waved at me in that manner. Back in 1969, I'd have bet all of your retirement investments that I'd never have to listen to Jimi, Janis, or Canned Heat while I hunted for denture glue. OK, I figured the Beatles would quickly end up as voices from the ceiling, but Jimi? No way! The Establishment could never get that hip, even for money.

Who'd have guessed that hippies, and the kids of freaks, would turn out to be grocery store managers? TV shows like "ER" and "Chicago Hope" assault us with emergency rooms (hence the acronym "ER," duh) and cardiac surgery nurses dancing to the sounds of everyone from Sly and the Family Stone to Doggy Dog. Van Morrison. Eric Clapton. Blue Oyster Cult. Van Halen, for Pete's sake. It hurts. Momma it hurts and it doesn't matter where you kiss it, it's still gonna hurt.

So that bit of security has been yanked away from me. I plod through my local super market, ridiculed by music I love used as a cover-up for "you will buy the things you want" subliminal messages. It's not enough that my joints hurt because of the abuse I gave them when I figured there was absolutely no chance I'd live to 30. It's not enough that a surgical screw-up has left me with an 8kHz tone whistling in my right ear at all times. No, just yesterday I was forced to endure "The Wind Cries Mary" from one hundred and fifteen microscopic loudspeakers powered by a three watt amplifier, accompanied by the erratic thumping of a few dozen square-wheeled shopping carts. Jimi, what are they doing to you?

Now I know that there is nothing sacred on this planet. I will die knowing that everything I value will be trampled and abused; before and after and while I'm dying.

Now that I've got the whining out of the way, there's an upside to this. You've probably all heard that the rate that the world's knowledge increases is on some kind of exponential curve. Fifty years ago, the world's knowledge base doubled every decade or so. In the 60's, the number of things we thought we knew doubled every couple of years. In the 80's we actually got dumber. In the 90's, we have to buy six gigabyte hard drives and 300MHz Pentium computers just to balance our checkbooks.

Anyway, you get the picture.

Geezerdom is doing the same thing. It gives me great pleasure to announce that my own, stodgy MBA-laden company is playing 1990's music on hold! Not even the pansy bubblegum stuff, but Blues Traveler. Even the grocery store, where I heard Jimi aurally violated, played U2 and Boys-to-Men tunes immediately afterwards. It almost lifted my spirits, until I realized I'd forgotten what groceries I was supposed to be buying.

You see what this means, don't you? The only generation that's going to be able to, legitimately, call Boomers "geezers" will be our grandchildren. At the rate generations are achieving geezerdom, even they may not be able to get away with it. Every time an elevator or a grocery store updates their playlist, another generation of geezers looses its bragging rights.

"Don't be calling me 'Pops.' Isn't that your favorite song on the p.a., old man?"

This is so cool I may put on some rubber boots, drag a ladder into the back yard, and see if I can write my name in the snow. I'm still going to be bummed about having to wear long pants to work, though.

February 1998

#5 I Love the NBA! (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day
If you're not watching what's going on in the NBA these days, you could be missing the opportunity of a lifetime. Forget the basketball, it's what they're doing in court that matters. (The basketball hasn't been especially interesting since the early 90's.)
There's this hood, Latrell Spreewell, who made a career of threatening teammates and team employees. A few weeks ago, Latrell took his game a notch higher and tried to strangle his coach, 48 year old P.J. Carlesimo, twice! Both times, it took the effort of several other players to pull Spreewell away from Carlesimo. The punishment for attempted manslaughter (It's hard to imagine Spreewell and "premeditated" in the same sentence.) in the NBA? A year's suspension from the NBA and the cancellation of Spreewell's $25,000,000 contract. Not even a mention of the fact that, normally, this kind of behavior would earn a trip to a controlled environment.
Spreewell's one of the few guys left in the NBA who can score with a shot more difficult than an uncontested dunk, so he's not going to unemployed after the suspension is ended. Worst case, next year, some brain-dead, spoiled brat team-owner will, most likely, sign Spreewell to a $50,000,000 contract. This isn't going to be expensive for Spreewell, in the long run.
Even more important to us is that it might not be expensive to him in the short run, either. The NBA Players' Union has taken Spreewell's case to arbitration. Best case, they want him reinstated with no penalty (my favorite). Second best case, they want him suspended with loss of pay for the period between the attack and the arbitrator's decision. (Honest! I'm not making this up.) The NBA still wants to stick him with their original penalty.
If a high profile, roll-modeling, sneaker-advertising NBA superstar can get away with near-murder, think of what this means for postal employees? If the final penalty for Spreewell turns out to be a half-year of unemployment followed by a much better contract (with a no-firing-for-attempted-manslaughter clause) and lots more money, what could this mean for the rest of us?
If you thought Dodge City was fun in the 1850's, just imagine New York City or Los Angeles in the 1990's with NBA-Latrell Spreewell rules. Wyatt Earp would either be in heaven or be hiding under his bed, depending on your reading of that bit of history.
What about the effect of the "Spreewell Rules" on real work? First, all jobs would instantly be "empowered." After the initial holocaust, American business would be completely revitalized. All the MBA-fast-trackers would be dead, in traction, or in hiding. The only executives left alive would be those few who had enough supporters to provide them with adequate protection. While the stock market seems to be completely incapable of determining which companies are competent, employees would be able to take a considerably more direct approach; also described as a "lunge for the throat." There would be a wave of extremely productive, executive suite "layoffs," followed by a lot of MBA students switching their major to something more practical.
All of the above will be followed by a whole new era of "job security." Just imagine the value of being able to put on your annual review "Hey! I didn't try to kill the fool, did I?" That ought to be all you need to get a 10% salary increase.
Personally, I hope Spreewell gets off. I'd really like to see him get away with it. For most of my career I've wanted to choke an executive or three. I, at least, ought to be rewarded for exercising considerable restraint. I'd settle for a four day work week.
February 1998

#4 Who's Sinking the Ship? (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day
   
If you follow politics, even a little, the uproar about Clinton's possible dalliance with an aide has got to be a lot confusing. For me, two big questions come to mind: 1) Who cares? and 2) Is the job of President of the United States so boring that Clinton needs this kind of distraction?

The answer to #1 is, obviously, Republicans care. They care for all of the wrong reasons. They seem to be almost rabid about the fact that a Democratic president has stabilized and reduced the National Debt to a manageable size. They hate the fact that a Democrat has been President during one of the most stable and productive economic periods in modern history. Economics and business are what Republicans claim as their territory.

In the last twenty years, the Republicans in charge have claimed to be economic conservatives while giving away the bank, and the country's future, to a collection of domestic and foreign bidders. Suddenly, a Democrat is playing the same game, considerably more competently; and that really ticks off Newt and his buddies.

Republicans have always owned the FBI, CIA, NSA, and every law agency down to small town, Midwestern county sheriffs' offices. They have no trouble getting these bloodhounds to dog the footsteps of every living being ever to cross the President's path. And they may have found something or they may have found a way to make something up. But their purpose in doing this is not to protect the nation, it's to protect their powerbase. These people are no more patriotic in their actions or purposes than a dog is loyal to the carpet it pisses on. The country is nothing more than the place where they do their business.

Question #2 is even more interesting, to me. In my 35 years of employment, I'm still waiting to see my first executive who actually provides something valuable and necessary to his/her company. In fact, in most of the companies I've worked, if the whole upper echelon of execs suddenly died it would be months before anyone noticed. (Unless the company's instant increase in productivity created attention and suspicion.) I wouldn't doubt that the President may be about as valuable to the country.

If the Zippergate accusation is true, you have to believe there isn't all that much to being President of the United States. Most of us with normal jobs don't have the time or energy to think about carrying on affairs at work. If the President has that kind of time on his hands, we're not getting much for our money, as taxpayers.

And let's face it, that has been true for the last 20 years of Presidents. Ronnie was senile, and not all that bright before he started losing it. Reagan, from the reports his own people have published, slept through most of his eight years as President. Carter had so little to do that he tossed the entire country's business aside for nearly a year so that he could concentrate on saving a bunch of State Department employees held hostage in Iran. Jerry Ford played golf and stumbled around for three years. Tricky Dick worried about aliens and communists taking over the last pair of functioning cells in his brain and vacationed in China after he got bored with burglarizing Democrat hotel rooms. Kennedy gave us Zippergate Part I. Eisenhower was a lethargic mix of Ford and Reagan's hobbies. And so on. If you deducted the non-government crap all of these ex-Presidents did during their terms, you might end up with four years worth of forty hour-per-week work for the lot of them.

Instead of impeaching Clinton, I say we start paying all politicians on a piece-work basis. I wouldn't trust any of them to play a time-clock straight, so let's figure out a flat rate and pay them only for the stuff we want them to be doing. Based on my 40 years of tax paying experience, I think that would lower the total cost of government to about $500 a year.

January 1998

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#3 Teaching Quality (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

I attended a “quality” seminar the other day, similar to all of the quality seminars I’ve attended  in the last two decades.  The only interesting difference in this particular program was that it was taught by an ex-FDA Deputy Director.  Like all of the preceding training experiences, this class was directed at the wrong end of the company, the people on the firing line.  The trainees were all secretaries, customer service people, technical service people, assemblers, engineers, and middle managers.  Not a single executive put in more than a few cursory moments in this eight hour class.  No change there.  I’ve only seen executives put up with hearing about quality management when the training site is a vacation resort and all meals are provided by the corporation.  The Good Old Boys who are the root and source of every company’s quality problems just don’t want to be involved, unless there’s something in it for them.  I guess we’re not paying them enough, you think?

Teaching quality to the troops is redundant and ineffective.  The people who build and support the products know what it takes to make a good product.  They know where the resources are wasted, but have absolutely no authority to fix anything.  Lecturing factory and office workers on shifting quality investments proves that the hope for change and improvement is doomed from the beginning.  Any real quality program has to be driven top down.  Real quality programs are few and far between. 
Like I said at the start, the class I just attended was such a doomed program.  Wasted effort and misdirected focus.  Unlike the best classes I’ve suffered, this instructor had a bias that almost cancelled any hope he might have of even understanding the problem he described.  He told us that although we might think the Japanese had invented “quality,” we would be wrong.  According to him, the Japanese have “never invented anything, they just steal it from us.”  He’s wrong, but he’s not alone.  Lots of ignorant executives make similar claims.  Some even more idiotic engineers say the same things.  It’s a cultural problem.

In manufacturing, execution is everything.  Nothing else matters.  Any college can supply dozens of “creative nerds” who will be innovative and original.  I mean any college; Japanese, German, Taiwanese, French, and American.  The history of software design has shown, I believe, that if you seat enough monkeys at enough typewriters, eventually, they’ll write Macbeth or Microsoft Word or Lotus 1,2,3.  When dozens of people are involved in a difficult and large project, process coordination is more of a happy accident rather than the result of a carefully executed plan. 
Coordination and execution are critical items in manufacturing that we too often discount as unimportant, third-world characteristics.  While we over-reward ourselves for “creativity,” we discount the importance of actually doing the work.  Running a manufacturing company isn’t about some mythical “big picture,” it’s about getting work done everyday.  The work requires people who can and will focus on details and will do it with skill and consistency. 

The early history of the Japanese automotive and electronics invasion has shown that mediocre designs, produced with consistent and acceptable quality, will be in as much demand as state-of-the-art products produced with inconsistent or unreliable quality.  None of the products Sony or Toyota shipped to the U.S. in the 1960’s surprised any knowledgeable engineer with innovation or styling.  The surprise was that a consumer could buy one of those companies’ products and expect it to work right off of the boat.  The surprise was actually no surprise!  We learned to expect that everything we bought from Japanese companies would be consistent.  We could stop looking for the defects we’d learned to expect from “Monday/Friday” production.  We could quit doing a final inspection, before we carried our purchases out of the the store.  Since the Far East has taken over production of almost every complex product manufactured—even those with American company names—we no longer worry about what is going to happen the first time we plug in our appliances, TV’s, stereo systems, and computers.  That’s no small feat.

  The difference between a quality product and a piece of junk is in the execution of the design and manufacturer, from front to back.  Somehow, in the U.S. we’ve decided that the front end of the process is nearly infinitely more valuable than the back.  We think the concept is more valuable than the reality.  The reason Japan is seen as the quality supplier of every product they export is because they have not made that mistake.  The best Japanese companies realize that building the product is as important as creating it.  They apply their resources accordingly. 

In the U.S., Manufacturing receives the pressure and Design gets the perks.  Every talented engineer wants to be a designer, a “creative” engineer.  Only the dregs, the less talented, less innovative engineers are regulated to manufacturing.  In fiction (as in Haley’s book Wheels) and fact, the designers are royalty and the builders are grunts.  “Suits” are valuable, blue collars are expendable.  With that standard set and accepted, we’ve given up more than half of the formula to manufacturing success. 

January 1998