Or here, have one I came up with for a fanfic: staff movements and activities have to be updated in real time, in each of two separate systems for HR and Finance. HR and Finance use different coding systems for each activity, two different conceptual frameworks to describe the activities being recorded, and different database structures, and each update will require being fluent in both systems simultaneously. Oh, and for the icing on top: the two systems synchronise every fifteen minutes. If your employee's information in the two systems doesn't match, it gets wiped entirely, and the employee is not paid. Neither system will notify anyone when this happens.
[1] For details on how this is working so far, try phoning any of the service delivery agencies for the Australian Department of Human Services (apparent motto: "have you been serviced today?")
]]>The evil genius is that a well-run, ethical organization would run on something like that basis, but in the real world letting all the entry level peons skive off on a moment's notice while leaving senior management perpetually in place to meddle in operations would leave a smoking hole in the ground.
]]>All coders have to take in in turns to do customer support.
I've lived this one. The product was portable C software delivered in source form, and there are customers in this space who will insist on taking theirs by phone (vs. e-mail), reading bits of C over the phone at you and demanding immediate answers or simply asking "what do I do now that I've got your software?"
And yes, you kept your support issues when the turn passed to the your co-worker. Lots of fun when the customer wanted to keep asking you new questions as they came to mind.
And then we got a manager who liked to change the support schedule around on short notice.
]]>This is a fine suggestion but it fails to spell out one important point. All users get the new software at exactly the same time -- including tech support! If the tech support people got their hands on it before everyone else they'd be out of synch with the people they were helping (and would have seen the software before the people they were supposed to help). Management may or may not schedule extra bodies for the big rollout day.
You may think I'm making this up but I'm not. This was SOP for a whole state, too...
]]>Someone, somewhere in an organisation I worked in about 10 years ago decided it would be amusing to place three people called Jonathon doing vaguely similiar jobs with overlapping contacts (both external and internal to the organiisation) at adjacent desks sharing a telephone extension. Oh the fun we used to have...
]]>For some reason, if she just called out 'Rachel' there'd be more than one response.
(We referred to them as 'her Rachel', 'our Rachel' and 't'other Rachel'.)
]]>This is when flunkies of Godzilla are brought in, with minimal knowledge of the job or of Brontosaurus, to interview all Brontosaurus people to see if they should be allowed to continue doing the jobs that they are doing. Mere demonstration of competence is irrelevant; are they good at sucking up to random Godzilla personnel? Since the name on the company letterhead has changed these people are obviously new hires, not entitled to any seniority accumulated when working for Brontosaurus, and might not be hired at all. No, nobody making those decisions is involved with making any of the old functions actually happen.
In the meantime I've changed the name of Godzilla because you've heard of them and they have many lawyers. Supposedly this was a few years back and they're turning their culture around now, honest...
]]>My birth year my first name was big in the US. My senior year of high school there were 11 people in our physics class. 5 of us with the same first name.
]]>"Every time you have something you could send an email to inform everyone about, hold an hour meeting instead."
]]>Arm your company security guards. Let them prowl the halls occasionally looking for problems. I mean, just look at how paranoid those employees are when you walk past and they look at your quick-draw holster.
Allow open-carry in the office. There will be plenty of people who will be happy to show that they're ready for anything, especially if anything goes wrong during that employee evaluation you're giving them. Really, what's the worst that could happen?