BreakPoint
This is Hooovahh
@JW-JnJ wrote:
I have this dilbert hanging in my cube because of this very thing. https://dilbert.com/strip/2010-03-17
...slightly on topic and mostly tangentially, I'll share some of the gems I decide to prominently display at the entrance to my cube. Half of them I find funny, and half are me venting like above.
The app note has the following line highlighted "Ground is a convenient fantasy invented by engineers to simplify life"
The automation XKCDs are due to the number of request I get to spend a ton of time coding to save a user a few minutes. (https://xkcd.com/1319/ and https://xkcd.com/1205/ )
Oh, and this is on the outside of my cube.
because I work on a cube lane of the lab's electrical experts
@JW-JnJ wrote:The number of times I've been told my software doesn't work and I find out someone messed with the INI files and left the system in a bad state...
The number I've times I've been told my software doesn't work only to find out the other test engineer didn't use the libraries correctly...(Josh knows who I'm talking about here).
@JW-JnJ wrote:The number of times I've been called back to the lab because of a "broken test set" where I only plug one thing in to fix it...
...Or just turn on a power supply because the technician turned it off with his knee...
I've been lucky in my current position in that I very rarely have these kinds of issues. I just run into other issues such as "Oh, we changed the data format so you need to completely redesign your analysis code. And hurry, because we need production test results by the end of the day. THE SCHEDULE MUST HOLD!"
I've been trying to make the point with my colleagues that our systems need to be robust enough to operate even if the power supplies are off or the cables aren't plugged. This hasn't gotten much traction...
A few from some friends of mine.
Venture Money
A friend of mine was working at a place that seemed shaky financially. But his boss kept reassuring everyone that they were safe and all was good because there was a venture capitalist that was willing to put more money into the company, and he was coming for a visit. When he got there he was upset with how everything was being done. One comment he made was:
“Did you just waste my son's inheritance? Is your heart in this?”
My friend said he thought to himself “It sounds like you’re doing this for fun, I’m doing this so I can eat.”
After he left my friend’s boss asked him “Have you ever made it to the end of LinkedIn recommendations?” The company didn’t last long after that.
Geo Savings
There was this geolocation service that his company paid for that converts IP addresses into approximate zip codes. The sales rep for the service calls and said "Just so you know, prices are going up a lot this year". The business person freaked the f*** out, and blew up at them. There were a bunch of meetings internal and with the sales rep. Eventually they ended up turning the service off because no deal could be negotiated. This caused a two week outage of everything that relied on this service. In the end they just had to pay the new price and the increase was so small we all laughed. If the business person had not blown up and just listened to hear what the price increase was this whole thing could have been avoided.
It was like $500 bucks a year more.
Walk of Shame
A friend of mine was let go from a company in a large wave of layoffs. It sucked and he recovered. But on his last day they had a big meeting and announced that a number of employees would be fired and they would be asked to pack up their things and leave. So security would take one employee at a time, walk them to their desk, have them pack up and leave. My friend had to do the walk of shame while carrying a mini fridge he brought in, and on top of it was a bottle of liquor. He wasn't an alcoholic, he was just in college and didn't think he would be walked out that day.
1 Day Notice
So I was working with several people in a different engineering discipline for testing a product. We all worked together, and sat together and worked very closely but we reported to different people. I was working with one guy on testing a thing pretty much daily and we were working out some issues. One morning someone told me this guy put in his notice to quit that day. I found him and asked him when his last day was and he replied “Hopefully today”. I was a bit taken back and asked when he put in his notice and he said “today”. This wasn’t a bad place to work, he had a salary engineering job, and he seemed pretty happy but just didn’t see a reason to put in anything more than a 1 day notice.
Years later I heard he quit that new job he took, and apparently he again put in a 1 day notice.
When everything is an emergency nothing is
HQ for the would send out strange off the wall requests all the time with high priority emails. They sent out an email asking for asset information in the next 6 hours with urgency on hundreds of pieces of equipment. Urgent emails asking about all computer hard drive serial numbers in all computers in the building, or MAC addresses labeled “Urgent”. Needing to get water mineral samples of our facility's water quality by the next day, despite having a policy to get 3 quotes first, and get a chain of approvals that takes a week to get approved.
As a result, anything labeled “Urgent” was immediately put on the backburner and ignored.
Kinda Busy Here
"You want to talk to me about the paint color of the new office? That’s not important to me right now. I realize this is important to you, but I have other very important matters to work on. If I don’t get something done in the next hour you won’t have to worry about talking to me about the paint color. You can worry about talking to my successor about it."
Two Meal
A friend of mine went to Red Robin, which is a sit down burger restaurant, and ordered a burger and fries. The burgers are pretty big, and it came with unlimited fries. He said he was super hungry that day and ate his burger and fries as fast as he could. When the waiter came around he asked if he needed anything else.
Yeah I’d like another burger.
Sir, just so you know, we have bottomless fries.
I still want another burger, I know what I’m about.
First Time at 5 Guys
Years ago a friend of mine was traveling for work and at the airport saw a 5 Guys restaurant. Back then they were new and he’d never been to one, but wanted a burger while waiting for his layover. Having never been there he got a bacon cheese burger, and a large fry. At a normal fast food place that would have been a fine order. But if you’ve ever been to 5 Guys you know that if you order the regular fries, you could probably split them between two people. A large fry is probably a pound of potatoes. And a bacon cheese burger is actually a double burger, with each patty being very large.
When he got his food he was confused by the two bags the guy handed him, which just looked like two bags of fries. He asked where his burger was and was told it was at the bottom of one of the bags. So he ate all the fries he could getting to the bottom. By that time he was too full to eat the burger, and ended up throwing the rest away. He later said he should have known something was weird by how expensive his food was.
