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Now being stupid is not illegal, immoral, or evil. In fact, one can have a pretty good life and not be the sharpest knife in the drawer. But one should at least, ya know, pay attention.
Where I work it gets rather humid. Why? Well, the air handling systems were designed with a particular room configuration in mind. If you constantly change that configuration, without changing the air handling system, rooms don't get cooled anymore. As an example, put a fan in the doorway into your kitchen, now turn the stove on, one burner should be enough. With the fan blowing cooler air into the room, shouldn't be a problem.
Now close the door so the fan is no longer blowing cool air into the room. It's going to heat up in the kitchen. Let that condition stand for a while, soon it will be uncomfortable in that room. Now open the door, it will take a while for the temperature to come back down. We never open the door once we close it. As a matter of face, we'll probably build more walls around the fan. It's what we do.
Anyhoo, my lab gets humid enough so that a piece of paper left on a desktop will be soggy after a couple of days. No, really. So facilities gave us a dehumidifier, which will fill a 30 gallon bucket in 3 days. Less if the humidity outside is really bad. Now facilities assured us that they would empty the bucket when needed.
Apparently "when needed" means when we call them. Wence they will reassure us that "we're on it" and no one will empty the bucket. Bear in mind that this is a union job, so we can't just empty it ourselves. They get pissed if company folks do union work. I understand that.
Anyhoo. Last Thursday, the last workday before a long holiday weekend (four days for most of us) the bucket was getting pretty full, there was zero chance of it being emptied before the weekend. So I decided go behind the wall facilities put up in the lab (which is what gave us the humidity problem to begin with) and turn the dehumidifier off.
Well, that partitioned off section also has a lock as it's where the IT folk will store incoming computer stuff and computers that are on their way out. The guys in my lab all know the combination, which IT didn't like at first, until they were told that they would have to monitor the dehumidifier bucket. Then they had no problem with letting us have the combo to the room.
At any rate, I went to the door and the lock would not unlock. In fact, the lock felt "off," if you know what I mean. In other words, it didn't feel right when I punched the numbers in, not the wrong combo, but it felt like the buttons didn't quite work. After checking with security to make sure the combo hadn't been changed (it had not) I had to get the locksmith.
Yup, busted lock.
So we propped the door open.
Friday, one of our guys actually was in the lab (on his day off, Steve is funny like that). He heard an IT guy in the other room and before he could tell him to not lock the door, IT guy had locked the door. (No, the locksmith hasn't changed the lock yet, it's on order. Everything is always on order.)
Our guy got the door open again. (I won't say how, maybe the safety guy reads the blog!) This time someone (probably the IT guy) put a sign up to not lock the door, as the lock was busted. Fairly good sized sign as well. Pretty bloody obvious as there is normally NO SIGN on the door. So having a sign kinda stands out.
So yes, it's Tuesday now (as I write), the dehumidifier has yet to be emptied but we were able to run it for a while as the bucket had not overflowed, yet. The door was open, the sign was in place.
Then someone comes along, notes that the bucket is almost full, then goes in to turn the machine off.
Then closes and locks the door.
We're a high tech company, apparently though we employ people who can't fire trucking read. No, no, you're right, I'm too harsh. They're just not paying attention.
Dumbasses. They're everywhere.
Pay attention, don't be a dumbass.
Yes Congress, I'm looking at you.
Please excuse my obvious crabbiness, well, more crabby then usual I suppose. My left eye is bugging the Hell out of me. I'm "seeing" a retina specialist on Thursday, hopefully whatever malfunction I'm suffering from is fixable. I hate not being able to see as well as I used to.
Picture of Red fits your narrative to a "T". I saw the scene of Buzz Lightyear standing with Woody, pointing with one arm and the caption, "Dumbasses, everywhere you look...Dumbasses". Demos changed the rules for the Supreme Court and now it's come back to bite them in the ...well... ass. Fingers crossed for you on Thusday Sarge.
ReplyDeleteWhen you change the rules to get your way one time, you deserve getting bitten in the ass at some future date. Poetic if you ask me.
DeleteThanks Nylon12.
A supervisor once called me aside and quietly asked, "John, I locked my keys in my office, can you get in without any damage?"
ReplyDeleteMy first thought was, "Without any damage? No explosives? Who can work under these limits?"
I enlisted the help of a much younger and more agile coworker, borrowed a ladder from airport maintenance, and accomplished the task by removing and replacing two suspended ceiling panels.
The dumbass/common sense ratio does seem to be shifting dramatically towards dumbass.
Good post.
I mentioned that the door in question was wood. Cheap wood. The other guys suggested that there would be less paperwork doing it their way. Not as much fun, true.
DeleteYes, the ratio is shifting. Not good at all.
I was always annoyed when Management(usually a jumped up salesperson) decided they were also gods gift to engineering. the maintenance crews, having just finished installing a used bit of production machinery after building it up from a pile of parts dumped on the floor, was told by management that they didn't like where the machine was sighted. managers standing on a mezzanine about 100' away "thought it would look better" if we moved it six inches to the west. after it was bolted and grouted to the floor. wired in. plumbed in. aligned. Thank God i lived long enough to retire...
ReplyDeleteOh dear Lord, I have seen that more times than I care to admit.
DeleteIt has always been this way. It's just not PC to dress them down or give wall to wall counseling now. So, they fester... instead of being afraid of getting bawled out they chug along.
ReplyDeleteSTxAR, I think you're spot on with your explanation of why dumbassedry is on the rise. I think it's also enhanced by the "punish both people in the fight on the playground" mentality.
DeleteCrabby-ness must be in the air these days. Feeling quite a bit of it myself. Hope your eye is better.
STxAR - you are absolutely correct. We're no longer allowed to punish dumbassery, in fact in many circles it seems to be encouraged. Fester is a good name for what they do.
DeleteJuvat - Yup, the punish both parties mentality, in the interests of "fairness." And yes, crabbiness is in the air. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the antics of the dumbasses in the news, which try as I might I can't avoid.
DeleteThanks on the eye, hopefully they can fix it.
I know how you feel. Last job at the PD I worked out of an 'undercover' building that used to be an auto repair shop (yeah, undercover, they'd practice dynamic entry in the parking lot of building on targets in the trailer park one ditch away from us. Uuuuundercover.) I was in the section that used to be the 'customer lounge' and checkout counter and it had 1 air register towards the back wall, you know, where the 2 boss's offices were. Those had 2 air registers, an air return and thermostats. I was there 9 hours a day. They were there for 2 at most. So in the summer I'd melt, and wasn't allowed to wear shorts or sandals, even though a thermometer near my desk would read up to 85 degrees because the bosses were 'cold'. During the winter I'd freeze, as my desk area wouldn't get above 55 to 65 degrees, and I actually had two blankets from home I'd wrap up in while wearing my winter jacket, a fuzzy hat, and gloves with the fingertips cut out, all because the bosses were 'hot.'
ReplyDeleteThe server/internet room was a closet in the middle of the building with no airflow at all, and the servers and internet would regularly shut down due to heat or cold/humidity depending on the season, but no-one wanted the door open because, you know, servers aren't pretty or something. I got a door from surplus that had a big vent in it and got maintenance to istall it instead, which worked fine for about 3 months until someone taped paper over the backside of the vent because they didn't like hearing all the little fans go whirr.
And then there was the back A/C return register in the squad room. Door with two big vents in it, leading to the A/C. They moved some little thing to the desk next to it and that person got 'cold' so covered the vents up. New A/C ordered. By the City.
And then there was the A/C for my area. As described, no register or thermostat near me. Was acting up, getting worse over time, I had to keep calling maintenance to come fix it. Finally, a maintenance guy on his last 6 months before retirement took pity on us and replaced the old one that should have been replaced 5 years prior with the unit that the City bought 5 years prior but had been sitting in Maintenance for 5 years because the City determined that even though the old A/C was dying and costing lots of money overall, each repair was cheaper than installing the new unit. (Costs under $250.00 not needing city hall/city commission approval. So $200 every two months vs $300 to install...)
Then there was the furniture policy. Desk, chair, computer equipment determined not by need but by paygrade, with managers who only were in their offices for an hour a day getting dual or triple screens with a desktop and laptop and huge desks and really nice chairs while the lowly staff-ass who is doing multiple searches and spreadsheet management gets a carpy cheap computer and a 19"CRT screen with a single desk and a carpy chair. Thus the continued raids to City Surplus for desks and chairs and such for me, only to lose all that the next time we 'got' new furniture or computers or whatever, only to repeat the cycle again.
Sounds exactly like where I work.
DeleteWhat was especially bad about the A/C install vs repair was that was all internal billing. We weren't paying 200 per visit to an independent contractor. No. It was to the City Maintenance people. But City Hall never got charged for all their changes and fixes, like painting the mayor's conference room four times in one year. Nope.
DeleteMeanwhile, in order to paint our interior, one of the bosses paid for paint and supplies out of his own pocket. And got in trouble for not using an approved city color.
Not even going into the whole 'undercover' car thingy. That weren't replaced for over 5 years. Undercooooooover. Yeah...
Did I ever tell you I actually had, let's see, 7 bosses I answered to? Damned TPS reports.
Sounds like the Clark AB HF Receiver Site. The major systems (supporting SAC and SAM (AF1, AF2, and other VIP flights)) were on their own UPS, which was a godsend since in Jimmy Carter's half-vast wisdom, we not only turned over the bases to the Republic of the Philippines, but agreed to buy power from them, too, instead of running our own power plant. That wasn't really a problem during the dry season (other than the varying, and very 'dirty' power coming in), but come the monsoons and we'd be losing power up to several times a shift sometimes. Sure, the generators would kick on and the non-critical systems like WICU (Weather Intercept unit) would come back up, but it was hard on their power supplies. So even with 2 spare radios per level, there were times some levels were unavailable because of blown power supplies, plus whatever boards downstream those power supplies took out as they died (usually the A4 IF/AF board on those $250,000 (in 1980's dollars) RACAL receivers. Those weren't the only casualties, of course, just the most prominent. The cost of putting in another UPS for them would've cost less than 2 year's (maybe 1 year's) worth of losses, but maintenance came out of a different budget, so year after, taxpayer money pissed away. I told that to a Navy friend, and he said, "Yep, Uncle Sam's Aerial Fuckwits in action again. But the Navy said, 'Hey, that's nothing! Here, hold my beer!' "
DeleteWorked in an old aircraft hanger my last 5 years in the navy. We were in the offices on the mezzanine and new a/c had been installed. It seemed to work most places but not my offices because secure offices. They installed a digital thermostat, it got broke and the temp fix was an analog thermostat that was controllable by humans. Worked great. A month later they got around to putting in the new digital dingus and temps went up and up until darn, that thermostat was somehow knocked off the wall in the passageway outside my office and we were back to analog. Worked great. Repeated as necessary.
DeleteBeans - Thos cover sheets are a mother bear. (Sorry a bear.)
DeleteLarry - Sounds familiar, too familiar. (I like the new abbreviation for USAF, I do, I do.)
DeleteHMS Defiant - Sounds like an easy fix. Works this way, doesn't work that way. So sabotage, er I mean, adjust that way. (Usually by the offending system having an "accident.")
DeleteSomewhere in my mid thirties owned up to being an incurable a^^^^le, a workplace violence waiting to happen, and never again earned my daily bread working for wages. When you work on a commission or are self employed you drastically reduce the amount of dumbassery you deal with.
ReplyDeleteI do admire those who can function in organizations much like I admire combat veterans. You are a shining example.
A skill I learned as career Air Force.
DeleteSounds like you need to 'borrow' the hinge pins until the broken lock is fixed. That, and a hidden door can be surprisingly hard to find. Just ask the XO of just about every submarine :-)
ReplyDeleteHahaha! Love it.
DeleteWorkspace with only one set of keys, in the posession of the senior duty P.O..
ReplyDeleteKept it secured unless dity section was present.
I can’t tell how, but it only took slightly longer to open up without a key.
I've known "secure" workspaces like that.
DeleteHow about an evidence room with the cage built so the carriage bolt heads are inside and the nuts are outside? Or the $10k alarm system that didn't go anywhere because there was no budget for the $100 monthly monitoring and maintenance contract? In a building with over half a mil in illegal drugs and guns (at one time a low serial numbered Garand scheduled for destruction, I poop you not. A gun worth at least 5k and sent to the smelter. I wept when that one went away.)
DeleteBureaucracies were designed to demonstrate that there is no limit to human stupidity. They manage to exceed expectations every day.
DeleteI was assigned to Missile Radio at Minot AFB, North Dakota. Brand new communications squadron building. By the time they had all the landscaping done, they'd run out of money for enough vehicle electrical plugins for block heaters, so only Officers Row and Visitor Parking had plugins. Visitors who probably wouldn't be there long enough for their engines to freeze. Enlisted had no block heaters, so when very cold, there was a steady procession of enlisted heading out to run their cars for a few minutes every couple hours. But the landscaping was nice.
DeleteI wish I could say the same thing for the "Copper Room". Big Faraday cage for testing secret comms gear used in the Minuteman launch control centers (like a 1-baud rate ELF encrypted radio for backup communications). A room lined in copper with high voltage equipment all over, and for fire suppression, they'd thoughtfully included sprinkler heads instead of a halon dump. A fire would've been momentarily exciting for the poor sap(s) in the room at the time with energized equipment. o_O
Oh, boy....the stories I could tell!
ReplyDeleteI know exactly how you feel, and have left jobs because of the astounding amount of dumbassery at those places.
As I can see retirement on the horizon, just the mastheads at this point, but it's there, I don't sweat this crap much. Do I get riled about it? Of cousre, people have a certain level of expectation as to how I'll handle things, mustn't disappoint.
DeleteSarge! I'm a little disappointed in you. You're Air Force. Did you consider embracing the power of duct tape and just taping over both the latch on the door and the hole in the door frame so the door couldn't possibly be locked except by one needing to be hunted down and killed? Barring that, paper wads worked just about every time.
ReplyDeleteWe're a high tech company, all duct tape is kept (somewhere) under lock and key and cannot be had for love nor money.
DeleteRest assured, the problem has been handled. The guy who "owns" the room (former Navy) taped the latch closed in such a way that there is no way it can accidently be relocked.
As to the lock itself? Still on order.
We're a high tech company. On paper.
We had to access some stuff in a secure area one Sunday in Tripoli but no one was around. "Our" "Old AF Sarge" said: "Let me try Capt. Haf the combination locks in the AF are set either to 1492 or 1776." LOL!
ReplyDeleteHahaha!
DeleteWell, that used to be a secret...
Damn, I forgot! Speaking of secure areas, in RVN I had a fraternity brother was OIC in charge of the ATC facility (Paris Control) at TSN AB in Saigon. Once when TDY down there from DaNang I stopped by to look him up. He gave me a tour of the facility which was heavily sandbagged/armored at its base. Its entrance had a heavy automatic sliding blast door with punch-code box to gain entrance. "Gee, Warren" I said, "that's neat and all, but what are all those funny scratches in the metal next to the box?" "Oh," he casually replied with an air of jaded resignation, "that's our little VNAF friends who are too lazy to remember the code so they just scratch it in the metal next to the box each time we change it." So much for "security!" YIKES!!
ReplyDelete