Oh goodie performative theater from the big boss. Supervisors aren't closing their work orders? You don't say. None of the two big supervisors who oversee the individual ones are noticing issues with hours logged? Tell me more. Is there anything I've noticed that stands out from my end with the work order system? Maybe.
I mean it's not like I do a weekly report slash spreadsheet every Tuesday sent to every manager in the department detailing things like how many orders an individual worked on and for how long, how many open work orders were actually closed during the week, or how many open work orders each shop has and how long they've been open. It's not like I've been doing that for almost a year now according to your explicit instruction. It's not like I've seen how no one reads anything I write each week or takes heed of any anomalies in the data I point out.
It's also not like we've had this conversation several times over that last year with nothing done to address any of it, while knowing we'll be having it several times more over the next.
It's also not like we've had this conversation several times over that last year with nothing done to address any of it, while knowing we'll be having it several times more over the next.
Sounds like some of my conversations with my dad!
Children's rights are human rights.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
I'm in a group called the Best Buy Network. I've been on it for like four years now. Basically a small group of people from different positions around the company that huddle up with corporate folks to figure out what's working and what isn't. One of the other field agents mentioned their boss denied them a coat. Now for field agents, a coat is part of our uniform. They're something we get standard, and can be replaced every year if need be. So I, being the "I'm fucking done with bullshit" person, said "nah, that's part of the uniform. Submit the order again and keep doing it until he approves it."
Silly me didn't realize how many other managers are part of this group this year (which I don't think is ok!). They immediately got on my case about having a conversation and making a business case with her boss because that's the right way to do it.
And being an idiot I doubled down, said "look, it's black and white in SOP. Coats are part of the uniform. If the manager is denying it, they're pinching pennies out of spite. Submit it once more, then go to HR if he declines again. There's no positive intent to be assumed here."
Off to a great start!
If it's part of the uniform, why is there even an approval required?
I'm in a group called the Best Buy Network. I've been on it for like four years now. Basically a small group of people from different positions around the company that huddle up with corporate folks to figure out what's working and what isn't. One of the other field agents mentioned their boss denied them a coat. Now for field agents, a coat is part of our uniform. They're something we get standard, and can be replaced every year if need be. So I, being the "I'm fucking done with bullshit" person, said "nah, that's part of the uniform. Submit the order again and keep doing it until he approves it."
Silly me didn't realize how many other managers are part of this group this year (which I don't think is ok!). They immediately got on my case about having a conversation and making a business case with her boss because that's the right way to do it.
And being an idiot I doubled down, said "look, it's black and white in SOP. Coats are part of the uniform. If the manager is denying it, they're pinching pennies out of spite. Submit it once more, then go to HR if he declines again. There's no positive intent to be assumed here."
Off to a great start!
If it's part of the uniform, why is there even an approval required?
I think you might have missed the part where he explained that this was a huge American corporation that makes billions of dollars.
And they certainly don’t do that by giving out coats that they require their employees to wear.
It's penny wise and pound foolish. It's fairly trivial to limit people to 1 order of something in most procurement systems and the combined wasted time of the manager and employee likely already outstrips the cost of the coat.
Not to mention productivity and morale loss as that employee now won't go out of their way to help their manager or company.
In my company we did away with these approvals for stuff under a certain amount that's considered "appropriate" because finance felt the need to constantly dicker with us on equipment need which led to massive wasted time. Now I just get a notification of "hey, your employee ordered X" with no option to veto.
Green dollar business expenses suck, but compared to most salaries they're cheap as hell and your only goal should be to make it as efficient as possible. It still irks me when I see management dragging their feet on computer orders for senior devs making 150k+. You lose the cost of the computer in the first week or two of shitty performance.
I'm in a group called the Best Buy Network. I've been on it for like four years now. Basically a small group of people from different positions around the company that huddle up with corporate folks to figure out what's working and what isn't. One of the other field agents mentioned their boss denied them a coat. Now for field agents, a coat is part of our uniform. They're something we get standard, and can be replaced every year if need be. So I, being the "I'm fucking done with bullshit" person, said "nah, that's part of the uniform. Submit the order again and keep doing it until he approves it."
Silly me didn't realize how many other managers are part of this group this year (which I don't think is ok!). They immediately got on my case about having a conversation and making a business case with her boss because that's the right way to do it.
And being an idiot I doubled down, said "look, it's black and white in SOP. Coats are part of the uniform. If the manager is denying it, they're pinching pennies out of spite. Submit it once more, then go to HR if he declines again. There's no positive intent to be assumed here."
Off to a great start!
If it's part of the uniform, why is there even an approval required?
I think you might have missed the part where he explained that this was a huge American corporation that makes billions of dollars.
And they certainly don’t do that by giving out coats that they require their employees to wear.
It's penny wise and pound foolish. It's fairly trivial to limit people to 1 order of something in most procurement systems and the combined wasted time of the manager and employee likely already outstrips the cost of the coat.
Not to mention productivity and morale loss as that employee now won't go out of their way to help their manager or company.
In my company we did away with these approvals for stuff under a certain amount that's considered "appropriate" because finance felt the need to constantly dicker with us on equipment need which led to massive wasted time. Now I just get a notification of "hey, your employee ordered X" with no option to veto.
Green dollar business expenses suck, but compared to most salaries they're cheap as hell and your only goal should be to make it as efficient as possible. It still irks me when I see management dragging their feet on computer orders for senior devs making 150k+. You lose the cost of the computer in the first week or two of shitty performance.
This is also why we have corporate cards. There are things we need that we can't get on our site, or might need to go to the hardware store for in the moment. These expenses are almost never questioned because what, you're going to tell an installer that they shouldn't be buying parts for a custom job? But penny pinching is gonna forever be a thing because we have to shave every expense to hit our targets so management gets their bonus.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
+4
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
(cross-posting from D&D Chat)
Okay, this is cool now that I'm getting things set up.
My current security profile is:
Master KeePass password safe, stored in Dropbox
- This is downloaded on my personal laptop, work PC, and Pixel phone
- I have a fairly long passphrase on the vault
- On my phone, I have the PW saved with biometric data so I can unlock it.
I use Google Authenticator for my Work Microsoft account, Google, Nintendo, Twitter, Twitch, Amazon, Amazon Web Services, and my work password manager.
I have Steam and Battle.net authenticator setups.
Everything else usually has SMS or email-based 2 factor authentication on somewhere.
So I bought 2 Yubikey C NFC style. These are now tied to my Google account, to unlock it, and I'll be adding more as I play around with things.
But I wasn't sure how to set up my password vault. There's a plugin that supports OTP generation, but once you do that you can't unlock your vault with your password... Which was locking me down just a tad too much. So instead, I used the secondary function. A static password that sits alongside the OTP generator. So now, if I plug in the key... I can get access to my vault without having to type!
I'm also looking at setting up the YubiKey authenticator and moving off of Google's, because with that I can use the NFC features to unlock passwords, as well as store my auth codes on other devices.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
I'm guessing by writing the first email they'd already spent more company resources than they were saving. Certainly by the time somebody read it.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
God see, that's the thing. Was it worth everyone's time and effort? No.
Would it have been criminally illegal to complete it? Yes.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
I'm guessing by writing the first email they'd already spent more company resources than they were saving. Certainly by the time somebody read it.
The Accountants!
Even looking at the invoice in the first place it was all wasted. One of my favorite corporate moments was being called into a big meeting around a $1500 discrepancy and people making a hubbub about how it can't happen (it was a systems timing glitch that was a "once in forever" type scenario). I had my laptop, so I did some quick math based on the people in the room, then raised my hand and said "just so everyone knows, we've already identified some potential fixes and this meeting alone is costing roughly $28,000, so can we just move this to email?" There was silence and the meeting broke up 5 minutes later.
+37
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
I had a supervisor for a government job who related to me a story once about how they had to take a second trip to Walmart over an item that rang up incorrectly, spending over half a day over the discrepancy of about 12 cents.
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
+10
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Every time an employee pays out of pocket for something vital to their job because the reimbursement process is too intolerable, the business office gets a pair of vile leathery wings.
+24
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Every time an employee pays out of pocket for something vital to their job because the reimbursement process is too intolerable, the business office gets a pair of vile leathery wings.
Saw this on twitter and it felt very much like a work story from @Zonugal
"Today, when introducing WWI, a student raised her hand and brought up the death of a certain archduke. Nobody knew his name, so as a hint, I offered that he shares his name with a band.
Gentle reader, my students asked if there had perhaps been an Archduke Metallica."
Every time an employee pays out of pocket for something vital to their job because the reimbursement process is too intolerable, the business office gets a pair of vile leathery wings.
I figured they climaxed whenever that happened.
No one ever said it couldn't be both.
+1
Options
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
Dumb kids don’t even know Archduke Operation Ivy.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
+3
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I wish my students talked about Metallica.
Instead they just kept trying to get me to play their dubstep remixes via SoundCloud.
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I was in procurement compliance a couple jobs ago, because we were bought by a publicly traded company and had to be SOX compliant. Luckily we distilled it down. Created a purchasing portal with purchasing tickets and employee hierarchy and spend limits. Employee puts in a purchase request, their supervisor approves it, we buy it as long as its within their spend limits. Then the POs went through my manager and up the chain for final approval if they were large ticket items like capital expenses, but that was fairly rare.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
God see, that's the thing. Was it worth everyone's time and effort? No.
Would it have been criminally illegal to complete it? Yes.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
I'm guessing by writing the first email they'd already spent more company resources than they were saving. Certainly by the time somebody read it.
The Accountants!
Even looking at the invoice in the first place it was all wasted. One of my favorite corporate moments was being called into a big meeting around a $1500 discrepancy and people making a hubbub about how it can't happen (it was a systems timing glitch that was a "once in forever" type scenario). I had my laptop, so I did some quick math based on the people in the room, then raised my hand and said "just so everyone knows, we've already identified some potential fixes and this meeting alone is costing roughly $28,000, so can we just move this to email?" There was silence and the meeting broke up 5 minutes later.
About 12 years ago, I was asked by our Sourcing manager if I could help come up with any alternate sources for a part we were sole sourced on. We only had one source because the supplier owned the proprietary coating process that we had just jointly spent about $3m and 4 years of development time to come up with. I asked why, and the manager told me because they couldn't make them fast enough. To be clear, we used up this type of part at about 1-2 per day, and this specific part about once per week. There was no reason to run this supplier out of capacity.
So I dug into sourcing and demand side, and found out that our supplier had been incorrectly set as our sister plant in Europe. And our sister plant in Europe had set our other sister plant in China as their supplier. The China facility, at least, realized this part had to come from the US, so bought it from us.
So each night, MRP would process at each site. Demand for one from our plant would trigger demand for one from Europe, which would trigger demand for one from China, which would place a new PO on us. So next night, MRP runs in the US, sees demand for 2 with an open PO for 1 created yesterday. So the system would cancel the open PO because it was less than 48 hours old and issue a replacement PO with updated quantity. So now Europe needs 2...
I discovered all this because our current demand was sitting at 256 pieces for our sister site. At a cost of $2k a pop. But instead of asking, "Why are we seeing 5 years worth of demand at once?" all that was asked was "How do I confirm this sales order?"
Saw this on twitter and it felt very much like a work story from @Zonugal
"Today, when introducing WWI, a student raised her hand and brought up the death of a certain archduke. Nobody knew his name, so as a hint, I offered that he shares his name with a band.
Gentle reader, my students asked if there had perhaps been an Archduke Metallica."
I'm such a fucking nerd that I googled "Franz Ferdinand Band" because I know who the Archduke is, but had no idea there was a band named after him.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
I'm guessing by writing the first email they'd already spent more company resources than they were saving. Certainly by the time somebody read it.
The Accountants!
Even looking at the invoice in the first place it was all wasted. One of my favorite corporate moments was being called into a big meeting around a $1500 discrepancy and people making a hubbub about how it can't happen (it was a systems timing glitch that was a "once in forever" type scenario). I had my laptop, so I did some quick math based on the people in the room, then raised my hand and said "just so everyone knows, we've already identified some potential fixes and this meeting alone is costing roughly $28,000, so can we just move this to email?" There was silence and the meeting broke up 5 minutes later.
About 12 years ago, I was asked by our Sourcing manager if I could help come up with any alternate sources for a part we were sole sourced on. We only had one source because the supplier owned the proprietary coating process that we had just jointly spent about $3m and 4 years of development time to come up with. I asked why, and the manager told me because they couldn't make them fast enough. To be clear, we used up this type of part at about 1-2 per day, and this specific part about once per week. There was no reason to run this supplier out of capacity.
So I dug into sourcing and demand side, and found out that our supplier had been incorrectly set as our sister plant in Europe. And our sister plant in Europe had set our other sister plant in China as their supplier. The China facility, at least, realized this part had to come from the US, so bought it from us.
So each night, MRP would process at each site. Demand for one from our plant would trigger demand for one from Europe, which would trigger demand for one from China, which would place a new PO on us. So next night, MRP runs in the US, sees demand for 2 with an open PO for 1 created yesterday. So the system would cancel the open PO because it was less than 48 hours old and issue a replacement PO with updated quantity. So now Europe needs 2...
I discovered all this because our current demand was sitting at 256 pieces for our sister site. At a cost of $2k a pop. But instead of asking, "Why are we seeing 5 years worth of demand at once?" all that was asked was "How do I confirm this sales order?"
We need a reaction button for this sort of thing, a "to err is human" kind of thing...
Children's rights are human rights.
+3
Options
Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
I'm guessing by writing the first email they'd already spent more company resources than they were saving. Certainly by the time somebody read it.
The Accountants!
Even looking at the invoice in the first place it was all wasted. One of my favorite corporate moments was being called into a big meeting around a $1500 discrepancy and people making a hubbub about how it can't happen (it was a systems timing glitch that was a "once in forever" type scenario). I had my laptop, so I did some quick math based on the people in the room, then raised my hand and said "just so everyone knows, we've already identified some potential fixes and this meeting alone is costing roughly $28,000, so can we just move this to email?" There was silence and the meeting broke up 5 minutes later.
About 12 years ago, I was asked by our Sourcing manager if I could help come up with any alternate sources for a part we were sole sourced on. We only had one source because the supplier owned the proprietary coating process that we had just jointly spent about $3m and 4 years of development time to come up with. I asked why, and the manager told me because they couldn't make them fast enough. To be clear, we used up this type of part at about 1-2 per day, and this specific part about once per week. There was no reason to run this supplier out of capacity.
So I dug into sourcing and demand side, and found out that our supplier had been incorrectly set as our sister plant in Europe. And our sister plant in Europe had set our other sister plant in China as their supplier. The China facility, at least, realized this part had to come from the US, so bought it from us.
So each night, MRP would process at each site. Demand for one from our plant would trigger demand for one from Europe, which would trigger demand for one from China, which would place a new PO on us. So next night, MRP runs in the US, sees demand for 2 with an open PO for 1 created yesterday. So the system would cancel the open PO because it was less than 48 hours old and issue a replacement PO with updated quantity. So now Europe needs 2...
I discovered all this because our current demand was sitting at 256 pieces for our sister site. At a cost of $2k a pop. But instead of asking, "Why are we seeing 5 years worth of demand at once?" all that was asked was "How do I confirm this sales order?"
We need a reaction button for this sort of thing, a "to err is human" kind of thing...
Or... and hear me out on this one: You could just react to it without a button!
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
+3
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I've never worked at a place with its shit together enough to have the system auto generate the POs. I usually work at pretty small companies, so that's not really a needed feature, to be fair.
A regular part of my job is budget transfers. This is moving funds within our ERP between different parts of an incredibly dysfunctional large organization for various services.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one singlefucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
I'm guessing by writing the first email they'd already spent more company resources than they were saving. Certainly by the time somebody read it.
The Accountants!
Even looking at the invoice in the first place it was all wasted. One of my favorite corporate moments was being called into a big meeting around a $1500 discrepancy and people making a hubbub about how it can't happen (it was a systems timing glitch that was a "once in forever" type scenario). I had my laptop, so I did some quick math based on the people in the room, then raised my hand and said "just so everyone knows, we've already identified some potential fixes and this meeting alone is costing roughly $28,000, so can we just move this to email?" There was silence and the meeting broke up 5 minutes later.
About 12 years ago, I was asked by our Sourcing manager if I could help come up with any alternate sources for a part we were sole sourced on. We only had one source because the supplier owned the proprietary coating process that we had just jointly spent about $3m and 4 years of development time to come up with. I asked why, and the manager told me because they couldn't make them fast enough. To be clear, we used up this type of part at about 1-2 per day, and this specific part about once per week. There was no reason to run this supplier out of capacity.
So I dug into sourcing and demand side, and found out that our supplier had been incorrectly set as our sister plant in Europe. And our sister plant in Europe had set our other sister plant in China as their supplier. The China facility, at least, realized this part had to come from the US, so bought it from us.
So each night, MRP would process at each site. Demand for one from our plant would trigger demand for one from Europe, which would trigger demand for one from China, which would place a new PO on us. So next night, MRP runs in the US, sees demand for 2 with an open PO for 1 created yesterday. So the system would cancel the open PO because it was less than 48 hours old and issue a replacement PO with updated quantity. So now Europe needs 2...
I discovered all this because our current demand was sitting at 256 pieces for our sister site. At a cost of $2k a pop. But instead of asking, "Why are we seeing 5 years worth of demand at once?" all that was asked was "How do I confirm this sales order?"
We need a reaction button for this sort of thing, a "to err is human" kind of thing...
Or... and hear me out on this one: You could just react to it without a button!
Posts
I mean it's not like I do a weekly report slash spreadsheet every Tuesday sent to every manager in the department detailing things like how many orders an individual worked on and for how long, how many open work orders were actually closed during the week, or how many open work orders each shop has and how long they've been open. It's not like I've been doing that for almost a year now according to your explicit instruction. It's not like I've seen how no one reads anything I write each week or takes heed of any anomalies in the data I point out.
It's also not like we've had this conversation several times over that last year with nothing done to address any of it, while knowing we'll be having it several times more over the next.
Sounds like some of my conversations with my dad!
This isn't Best Requisition, comrade.
I may promote to a new job before I even get told the official pay for my new position…
Dayda
Traditionally served with a red, but these days most opt for grape juice.
It's penny wise and pound foolish. It's fairly trivial to limit people to 1 order of something in most procurement systems and the combined wasted time of the manager and employee likely already outstrips the cost of the coat.
Not to mention productivity and morale loss as that employee now won't go out of their way to help their manager or company.
In my company we did away with these approvals for stuff under a certain amount that's considered "appropriate" because finance felt the need to constantly dicker with us on equipment need which led to massive wasted time. Now I just get a notification of "hey, your employee ordered X" with no option to veto.
Green dollar business expenses suck, but compared to most salaries they're cheap as hell and your only goal should be to make it as efficient as possible. It still irks me when I see management dragging their feet on computer orders for senior devs making 150k+. You lose the cost of the computer in the first week or two of shitty performance.
So I may move back from Portland to LA, time will tell.
This is also why we have corporate cards. There are things we need that we can't get on our site, or might need to go to the hardware store for in the moment. These expenses are almost never questioned because what, you're going to tell an installer that they shouldn't be buying parts for a custom job? But penny pinching is gonna forever be a thing because we have to shave every expense to hit our targets so management gets their bonus.
I frequently do transfers of tens of thousands of dollars, uncommon but still frequent it's in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. There are a large set of rules regarding how funds can be moved, including determining the purpose of the funds, etc. I often have transfers under $100 because some services (like background checks) are done centrally so offices/departments pay for the work by doing a transfer.
What did I get today? A transfer for one single fucking dollar.
What was it for, you ask? "Coffee reimbursement"
Guess what isn't allowed by the god damn rules that govern how funds can be spent.
Guess who had to deal with at least 15 emails in which I copy-pasted said rules from the government code, more than once, as explanation.
Fucking jesus christ.
That is awesome... Oh wait, ok I'm sorry you had so much trouble.
(Seriously, why am I getting so much delight out of this story?)
Okay, this is cool now that I'm getting things set up.
My current security profile is:
Master KeePass password safe, stored in Dropbox
- This is downloaded on my personal laptop, work PC, and Pixel phone
- I have a fairly long passphrase on the vault
- On my phone, I have the PW saved with biometric data so I can unlock it.
I use Google Authenticator for my Work Microsoft account, Google, Nintendo, Twitter, Twitch, Amazon, Amazon Web Services, and my work password manager.
I have Steam and Battle.net authenticator setups.
Everything else usually has SMS or email-based 2 factor authentication on somewhere.
So I bought 2 Yubikey C NFC style. These are now tied to my Google account, to unlock it, and I'll be adding more as I play around with things.
But I wasn't sure how to set up my password vault. There's a plugin that supports OTP generation, but once you do that you can't unlock your vault with your password... Which was locking me down just a tad too much. So instead, I used the secondary function. A static password that sits alongside the OTP generator. So now, if I plug in the key... I can get access to my vault without having to type!
I'm also looking at setting up the YubiKey authenticator and moving off of Google's, because with that I can use the NFC features to unlock passwords, as well as store my auth codes on other devices.
I can't wait to play with this at work!
I'm sure I've told the microwave story here but this one gives it a run for its money.
I once had to fight a finance person in a chain of 12 emails that got escalated to management twice about a missing toll receipt for 75 cents. After that I took every opportunity to point out how useless they were.
I'm guessing by writing the first email they'd already spent more company resources than they were saving. Certainly by the time somebody read it.
The Accountants!
God see, that's the thing. Was it worth everyone's time and effort? No.
Would it have been criminally illegal to complete it? Yes.
I know which one I'm picking.
Even looking at the invoice in the first place it was all wasted. One of my favorite corporate moments was being called into a big meeting around a $1500 discrepancy and people making a hubbub about how it can't happen (it was a systems timing glitch that was a "once in forever" type scenario). I had my laptop, so I did some quick math based on the people in the room, then raised my hand and said "just so everyone knows, we've already identified some potential fixes and this meeting alone is costing roughly $28,000, so can we just move this to email?" There was silence and the meeting broke up 5 minutes later.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I figured they climaxed whenever that happened.
Yeah!
If you can't get sloshed in Heaven, what's the point?
Saw this on twitter and it felt very much like a work story from @Zonugal
"Today, when introducing WWI, a student raised her hand and brought up the death of a certain archduke. Nobody knew his name, so as a hint, I offered that he shares his name with a band.
Gentle reader, my students asked if there had perhaps been an Archduke Metallica."
No one ever said it couldn't be both.
Instead they just kept trying to get me to play their dubstep remixes via SoundCloud.
Archduke ZZ Top
Archduke Hootie and the Blowfish
Archduke Korn
For the most part it went pretty smooth.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
That's not very Russian of you at all, sir.
About 12 years ago, I was asked by our Sourcing manager if I could help come up with any alternate sources for a part we were sole sourced on. We only had one source because the supplier owned the proprietary coating process that we had just jointly spent about $3m and 4 years of development time to come up with. I asked why, and the manager told me because they couldn't make them fast enough. To be clear, we used up this type of part at about 1-2 per day, and this specific part about once per week. There was no reason to run this supplier out of capacity.
So I dug into sourcing and demand side, and found out that our supplier had been incorrectly set as our sister plant in Europe. And our sister plant in Europe had set our other sister plant in China as their supplier. The China facility, at least, realized this part had to come from the US, so bought it from us.
So each night, MRP would process at each site. Demand for one from our plant would trigger demand for one from Europe, which would trigger demand for one from China, which would place a new PO on us. So next night, MRP runs in the US, sees demand for 2 with an open PO for 1 created yesterday. So the system would cancel the open PO because it was less than 48 hours old and issue a replacement PO with updated quantity. So now Europe needs 2...
I discovered all this because our current demand was sitting at 256 pieces for our sister site. At a cost of $2k a pop. But instead of asking, "Why are we seeing 5 years worth of demand at once?" all that was asked was "How do I confirm this sales order?"
I'm such a fucking nerd that I googled "Franz Ferdinand Band" because I know who the Archduke is, but had no idea there was a band named after him.
We need a reaction button for this sort of thing, a "to err is human" kind of thing...
Or... and hear me out on this one: You could just react to it without a button!
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Hail Hydra!