25 July, 2017
So, somehow someone at work managed to send a routine system failure notification to a mailing list that included everyone who has access to that system. Like 26,000 people. Not a smart career move. I received the notification, saw it wasn’t really meant for me, deleted it, and moved on. But there’s always people who […]
Tags: stupidity
Comments: -
13 July, 2017
I know people claiming social security are sometimes seen as jobless spongers who are just too lazy to get a job, but based on my recent experience, getting the Social Security Administration to actually give you money is more work than an actual job. Allow me to explain. For reasons we don’t need to get […]
Tags: bureaucracy, children, money, stupidity
Comments: -
28 January, 2014
This year I’m trying to be a better person. Part of this is becoming less intolerant of others. This is going to be really hard, as apparently I have a lot of pent-up frustration and a bit of a temper. So let me try to purge it all in one go, and then I can […]
Tags: chocolate, stupidity, TV
Comments: -
2 November, 2012
Today I checked off another one of the tasks on my ‘Americanization’ list (note how I used a zee there!) by voting in a presidential election – a right conferred upon only U.S. Citizens (I naturalized in 2009), and only taken away if you’re a convicted felon (which I’m not). But as noted in previous […]
Tags: politics, stupidity
Comments: -
24 August, 2010
As Training Lead, one of my responsibilities is to provide User Procedures for the system we’re implementing. Because users have a nasty habit of taking my official global User Procedures and changing them to match what they want to do, I publish them in Adobe PDF format. And because I generate all of the User […]
Tags: bureaucracy, PC, stupidity, technology
Comments: 2
31 August, 2008
A couple of years ago, I bristled at a fellow employee berating me for running up the stairs at work and not using the handrail. I argued that using stairs is something that we educated people should be trusted to be able to do without the need for further instruction or the helping hand of a […]
Tags: safety, stupidity
Comments: -
5 March, 2007
I swore I’d never do this, but I’ve been suckered into reading ‘management’ self-improvement books. Last week I saw a copy of the ubiquitous Who Moved My Cheese? on a colleague’s desk, and scoffed at the ‘wacky’ title. “Well, have you read it?” he asked. Um, no. “Well, it’s about managing change. As you’re in […]
Tags: books, management, stupidity
Comments: 3
13 February, 2007
There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns wants to send an express package to someone. It rapidly goes through several handlers (in a parody of a FedEx or DHL advert – I forget which) before being given to Homer to deliver. Homer sees Mr. Burns’s name on it, and not realizing that this is the […]
Tags: postal service, stupidity
Comments: -
2 June, 2005
I work for a company that prides itself on its safety-conscious attitude. This is generally a good thing, but sometimes they can push it too far. Case in point: I recently had a run-in with one of their over-zealous, self-appointed ‘safety enforcers’. It was about 7am and I was just going into work. I crossed […]
Tags: safety, stupidity
Comments: -