Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for March 31, 2022

Just make the budget big enough to start with. Then it always comes in under budget

Still better than the seagull management which many of us have. Their practice? Swoop down, squawk loudly, crap on everything, and leave.

Bean counters, gaining ground on shysters as most despised

Mr. Sisyphus could use a better union.

We named our dung beetle Sisyphus.

And I want a raise, so I’m cutting your pay.

One man rolling a stone up a mountain – where’s the problem with the budget? He’s working very hard for no pay: win, win!

The mentality of middle management never ceases to amaze me. How people can become so invested in cruelty and inequality for the benefit of a company that owes them nothing is beyond my comprehension.

Want to really upset management? Gently and politely point out the flaws in their logic over the past few months and ask them how they’d like to try it their way to see how or even if it works. It neither goes over well nor makes them happy when it becomes quite obvious to them that the employees have been right and were indeed right for quite sometime. And then they’ll waste yet another 6 months to a year before they do it by trying another previously failed style and of course they will then place the blame for it on the employees. And there’s yet another reason why people are leaving jobs in droves. And too often and in too many businesses the management cannot understand why their management style fails to improve both effort and results. For the most part nothing has changed in decades. If it didn’t work ten years ago, and the style of managing the business after that, and the one after that too, did not work then maybe going back through the failed styles over and over isn’t actually a feature but really and truly is a flaw.

No, that cannot be. It must be the employees who are wrong. Stay the course! Damn the icebergs! Full speed ahead! (Why is everyone heading for the lifeboats!?!? Again and again?!?)

Under budget? How about a smaller stone to roll? That would save money, right?

I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand for you.

I don’t know what your job is, but this pamphlet says you are doing it wrong.

Keeping it under budget means to skim the excess off so a bunch of do-nothings in suits can get a huge salary bonus they don’t deserve rather than paying employees fairly, so they don’t have to work second or third jobs to provide for their families!

“We didn’t do the job, but we were cheap” is not the win some people think it is.

I always get that and syphilis confused. I wonder if Jennie Jerome did as well.

It’s not stone when it rolls back, and it’s not stone when rolled up.

So, technically, Sisyphus could have broken the rock down into constituent parts, carried them up the hill and reassembled them. Mngt’s lack of detailed instructions leaves lots of room on his part. Manage by outcome, not process.

Sisyphys is being fired? I mean, non renewed? I mean, downsized?

Listen Sisyphus you are taking far too much time to finish this task and are way over the budget for moving this rock up the mountain, so stop taking breaks, just because you are tired or hungry or whatever, and get this job done. At this rate you will never get started on emptying the ocean with this strainer.

Never seemed fair that the gods should be that pi**ed off with the King of Corinth. I think his parents naming him Sisyphus should have been punishment enough.

If corporations raised budgets like they raise CEOs salaries the world would be a different place.

A budget is a shot in the dark taken at a moment in time with the hope nothing will change before the project is complete. Currently working on a construction project that was bid (budgeted) two years ago. Due to it’s size and complexity the design process took two years, construction it is just now about start. As a result of tariffs and Covid, the price of materials has increased by 200 to 250% since it was bid. And then there’s the whole manpower issue… How do you keep that under budget?

I’ve worked for a few “good” middle managers. Curse them all.

Years ago I worked for a government agency that was building a large computer simulation. They had to contract out much of the work (because they weren’t approved to hire computer specialists) and they hired different companies to build different modules. Each company provided one or two programmers who worked on the project for most of the year. When the simulation was scheduled to be completed, the programmer for one company turned over his module and left. When the module was examined, it was blank. Turns out he had discovered that he was being paid less than half what the other programmers were being paid and when his company refused to give him a raise, he wiped out his work and quit. Unfortunately, the contract the government had with that company was a “best effort” contract and the company maintained that they had given their “best effort.” They got paid, the programmer went on to work for another company for a better salary and Uncle Sam ended up having to hire someone else to build that module which took another year. [Obviously, the agency also wasn’t approved to hire contract negotiators, but after that they sent management for extensive contract training.]

On reading this, it strikes me as very ‘Dilbertesque’.

Oh, this is going to end up pinned to soooo many cubicle walls……

That will teach you to never piss off Zeus again

How you know you’re in Hades.

This is when Sisyphus lets the boulder go and squishes Mr. Middle Management flat, thus keeping things under budget. Unfortunately, Senior Management (Zeus, in this case) will keep the savings as a bonus.

No joke – a department I supervised lost staff one year when a good worker retired, but my boss assured me the open position was budgeted, and would be filled ASAP. As the fiscal year ended, after months of such assurance – but no hire and constant excuses – the open position was never filled, but my boss got accolades and a fat bonus for my department coming in under budget. I quit the following year.

It’s the perfect set up. Assessor sees one man pushing one stone up one hill. True efficiency in action. The rolling back thing is just in the nature of the job and an acceptable side effect.

“You’ve been taking too many breaks.”

The never ending uphill battle. ;)

Job completion in any way possible is the only way to stop budget hemorrhage.

For those who don’t get the joke—-in ancient times,this man was condemned as punishment to roll a huge boulder uphill—-but the hill was designed so it couldn’t be done.They didn’t tell him this.

This method of doing business has been refined over the years.Only real difference is that some people wear neckties these days.

That kinda how my bosses operated was to low ball our state budget and hope for the best. State motto was to “do more with less.”

Middle management: responsibility, but not much authority

Otherwise known as Office Rats.

How exactly did Zeus force Sisyphus to push the boulder up the hill? Was it a choice between that and a Kardashian marathon viewing?

Let the boulder go, jump out of the way, and save some budget by eliminating middle management.

Your call is very important to us . . . but not so important we’d hire enough staff to actually answer it.

I would answer this with “Then you had better increase the budget or it won’t happen at all!”

Middle management… the glue that keeps the gears turning.

Is “Budget” a euphuism for a “rock”?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, our CEO invited me to his fifth solid gold vacation home.

Let it gooooooo, let it goooooooooooo …