Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 28, 2024

One guy doesn’t look busy, because he wrote a computer program that does all his work when he presses a button. Find out where that button is before you lay him off.

The rest are playing solitaire.

I’ll NEVER buy another new car that serves me with a digital contract. SOB slipped in some add ons at my cost. My last new purchase was paper and no tricks were involved!

Ironically, Bob gets more paper cuts than the rest of the department on his digits.

The boss never laid anyone off actively working on a number of projects. All our desks and benches were full.

Right down to Bob sneaking in doing crosswords and sudoku on paper while the others are doing Wordle on the computer.

one attorney’s justification for keeping his case paper copies in a filing cabinet? when the power went out for 3 days after an ice storm, he stayed open and made money.

Center guy is guaranteeing himself a bit of longevity.

The fellow is trying to impress his main client — a paper manufacturer.

Art Buchwald [remember him, fellow kids?] had a great humor column. One time he suggested that if you knew the boss was considering downsizing you walk into the office and demand to be the first one fired. “I can get another job in five minutes, but someone like Luke or Ethel would be unemployed for months.”

Ugg… the digital world. I my line of work, designing piping systems, I now spend less than half of my time doing the actual work. The rest is spent on endless “electronic” issues. From never-ending updates to computer glitches to repetitive re-training to adjusting to whatever software those up the food chain from me are using to 3D drafting. The result? My measured productivity is one third of what it was when we drew plans on paper and a process called “coordination”, where we work out whose stuff goes where, that used to be done in an hour around a plan table, now can take up to a year. Some progress…

Where I used to work, management would get upset when they would see machine operators sitting around. The operators would have 4 to 6 machines to look after and if everything was running good, they were making product, and waiting for the next task. If something went wrong, they had time to fix it and get it running again. Management decided they sat around too much, so they gave them more tasks, which gave them less time for trouble shooting. Srap rates went through the roof and management couldn’t understand why.

When big wigs were expected we had to clean our desks so it looked like we did NOTHING!!

Actually, DO lay off that guy because he makes everyone else look bad. Recently happened to a very good friend of Our Be❤️ed Count.

The others are ‘laboring’ with analog analogies.

Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it, it’s true. If you hire somebody without integrity , you really want them to be dumb and lazy. Warren Buffett

We were very lucky when we elected an easy to spot liar, grifter, coward, fraud and corrupt, unfit, incompetent Russian dupe in 2016. Imagine how much damage he could have done if he wasn’t lazy and stupid?

Yay Bob, way to go!

I knew exactly one person who tried this. She had her print privileges revoked (for repeatedly exceeding department quotas), and was later told she would have to buy her own office supplies once she had used a certain amount. Then there was the promotion that went to someone ‘more efficient.’ She did have lovely handwriting though.

He doesn’t even have a typewriter

“At least until he catches up with his backlog. Some of those are twentienth century documents.”

I once got laid off from a job where I was working on a long-term project that hadn’t yet produced a final report, so it probably appeared to top management that I was just a useless idler. But I was like the proverbial duck, looking calm on the water while paddling furiously below the surface. AFAIK, the project I was working on never did get done, which was a shame, because it would’ve provided a standardized statewide framework for something that hundreds of school districts probably had to each reinvent (or buy from vendors) individually.

Love it! haha

Is the boss stupid or does he know something we don’t know?

He’s ‘taken the mess out of his head and piled it on his desk.’ Now can focus on the immediate. ‘Piles of paper serve as temporary holding pattern.’ quotes are from The Myth of the Paperless Office.

Problem is that many companies lay off their top performers (with the highest wages)

I still say digital is the way to go. I went digital a long time ago, while my office mates stayed analog. When the office decided to go digital, I was already there and my office mates spent weeks trying to digitize all their paper.

It would be funnier, if it wasn’t so true to life. What makes you think much of anything goes into the decision???

A bit of truth there!

Bob looks busy with a cluttered desk, perhaps because he is less efficient in completing his tasks.

Did no one else read where the Russians said they could bring the internet and GPS down world-wide?

Look what happened last month when a MicroSoft “upgrade” cancelled flights all over the world!

I know, let’s put all our eggs in one basket – what could possibly go wrong?

Our legacy Bell telephone system was intentionally designed to route calls around failed components, which it did reasonably well.

I’ve not the same confidence in the contemporary world-wide internet system. But the next World War should sort that out.

Are they the Bobs?

At two different places, I’ve seen the guy who got all his work done for the day – and more – be the one to be laid off precisely because he looked “done” and didn’t look as busy (if you didn’t look at non-obvious indicators of amount of work completed). I’ve also seen the one guy who knew where all the bodies were buried laid off, which literally led to the shutting of the company.

One word…one word for The Graduate!!

I love it. I’ve always thought “a clean desk is a sign of a sick mind”; it’s also useful for at least the tangible appearance of industriousness.

Luddites Unite!

“Analog man in a digital world”. Joe Walsh.

I was told once, by a cynic, that when you are ‘laid off’ (told to go) you should leave a mess of unfinished work so that the department you left will be flat out finishing what you had left behind. Apparently it was something to remember you by. Apparently, supposed to be a version of the adage “Revenge is a dish best served cold”. Of course, most of those having to clear up after you were not responsible for your firing.

One place I worked had a woman something like Bob.

He cubicle was stuffed to the gills with piles of paper, 6 or 7 feet deep in places. All was well, until the piles of paper around her Computer caused it to overheat and set all that paper on Fire.

We spent the next two months working in borrowed offices using borrowed computers while the building was cleaned and our computers “Laundered” to remove all the soot and ash particles from them.

And, the residue from all the plastic insulation that had melted off the wiring all over the building.

Most of the stuff on the floor was OK once it was cleaned because the Fire mostly happened in the Ceiling Grids and all the Dust that had accumulated on all the Computer cables that were up there.

It was noted that there might have been even Less damage if the Computer cables and their loads of Dust hadn’t been installed Above the building’s sprinkler system.