Working on the company business plan presentation with the Big Boss. There's a "long plan" presentation which will probably be close to 300 pages. But first, corporate wants a "short plan" to view as a summation. in the past the long plan was done first, then the short plan was a selection of slides from that. this year, they decided it would be eaier to do the short plan separately, using a coporate-provided template. We've been working on the short plan for 2 weeks. It's up to 103 pages. The SHORT plan is up to 103 pages. The managers can't stop fucking around with it. It's due 4PM tomorrow. The long plan is also due 4PM tomorrow. We haven't started it yet, 'cause they can't stop fucking with the short plan. Dilbert save me.
Saving you is easy. All you need to do is just not give a fuck. Be one with Wally. Saving your employer, however, is another thing. I'm afraid that any company that doesn't, when confronted with a 103 page presentation, execute everyone involved immediately and with extreme prejudice is beyond hope of redemption. Any company that wants a 300 page presentation on top of that is populated with an executive class that consists solely of people who snort human excrement.
Should be a fun week. Gotta get the short plan done by Tomorrow at 4, the long plan done by Friday, and a 50-page proposal delivered to Washington by Monday morning, the latter two of which have not even been started. Tuesday: nuke to site from orbit.
So I was talking to the guy who's handling all the inputs from the big bosses. He says the original intent of the Short Plan was that it be a 10 page summary. Period. It's up to 110 pages now. When our president was reminded of this (and it was entirely his decision that it's 110 pages), he said "Damn. Well, we'd better add a 10-page summary to the front!" Voila, 120 pages! Missing the point, perhaps!?
You really, really, really have to send this to Scott Adams, along with Liet's comments. This could make for a couple of weeks of very interesting Dilbert strips.
I think there's something fundamentally wrong with the people here. In addition to the subject of this thread, we're also doing an RFI (Request for Information) that's due Monday. I'm told by one of the marketing guys that it should be made up of one page of info from each of the engineers involved. Our guys are submitting 8 to 12 pages each. The fucking thing is over 100 pages.
Different job, but we're here on a nice warm Sunday afternoon, getting a 120-page proposal done on a 3-day schedule, and one of the ladies couldn't get a sitter. Now, I understand completely, and she's a dear friend of 20 years but it does NOT help the rush and panic to have an energetic 3-year-old running around shrieking and playing with everything. 7 years, 5 weeks to go...
Holy shit. I don't ever want to work even for a company that works for a company that does consulting work for a company that works for a front company for a company that works for the government.
See? If you'd have saved the old fuel oil tank to build a driveway snow-clearing flamethrower back when I told you to you could strap it to the top of the Subaru and come in and burn the whole place down. Granted, you'll totally not get your retirement, but they'll probably put you someplace very safe afterwards.
This fucking shit is getting fucking tiresome. They're STILL tweaking the short plan after two weeks, which is due TOMORROW afternoon. They're still having meetings about it and "adjusting" the fanancial charts so they look good. We've given the long plan (230 pages now) barely a nod and it's due tomorrow too. And I'm sitting in my fucking cubicle an hour after I was supposed to leave AGAIN, waiting for some fucked up VP to make a few more notes so the president can review both plans AGAIN tomorrow morning and make MORE changes. At least everyone else has gone home so I can put Santana on and crank it.
Just when you think it's over... HQ gave us one more day to finish (read: for the execs to fuck with it more). Finally shipped it out this afternoon, after waiting 2 hours for the laaaaast input from one. more. VP who doesn't know what "deadline" means. I'd like to propose a new course to our training department: "How to FINISH."
Man, I worked at a gig where the VP couldn't make a decision. So you'd come to him with something and he'd nitpick details. If you "fixed" those details, he'd nitpick something else. If he ran out of things to nitpick, he'd tell you to change something that would wind up back the way it was. Fortunately I didn't report directly to him and my boss took a lot of flak for me because I'd just ignore him 90% of the time.
Editor friend of mine has a technique for when the client watches over his shoulder. CLIENT: Cut half a second from that scene, make the dissolve a second longer, and make the last scene a little brighter. FRANK (pushes some random buttons, runs the commercial backwards, then forward, ultimately making no change whatsoever): How's that? CLIENT: Um. Good, good.
I was in the union for 20 years, but it was sucky, dead-end union that served management more than its members. I got the hell out and into a salaried position about 10 years ago or so. In fact as of my last promotion, I no longer qualify for time-and-a-half. Anyhoo, the week from hell is over, and I'm vacation next week. W00T!!!
scottadams@aol.com At least, that's the address on the DNRC newsletters. He hasn't gotten any out in a while (the most recent one I have is from early 2008) but he hadn't changed it in years and years, so it is entirely possible it is still valid. Edit: I just checked it out on the Dilbert blog, and it's still the same. Tell him all about it, and he will have a lot of fun with that. So will millions of others.
