BreakPoint
This is Hooovahh
Absent Interview
I was working at a company using some off the shelf equipment and software. I was learning quite a bit about the system and how it worked, and was in close contact with the supplier. After working with them for a while one of their sales guys asked if I wanted a job with them. I said I wasn’t really interested and was happy where I was. The truth is the type of work I would be doing didn’t interest me much. But the guy didn’t take no for an answer. They emailed me about how they were setting up an interview with the time and place. I emailed back saying I wasn’t interested. Not long after I got an automatic calendar invite with several people including HR for an interview. I just never showed up, and they gave me the cold shoulder the next time I contacted them.
Free Ice Cream If You Hurry
It was St Patrick's day. I was in the lab and saw two people I’ve never seen before holding green balloons, and a green bucket. Someone talking to them realized they were trying to give us green ice cream as an office treat. I’m not the type of person to say no to free treats so I said sure. They took us into the cafeteria, gave us frozen popsicles and asked if they could take our picture. I know the fair trade for free food so I said yes. They took our picture, then picked up the decorations and food and left. They were there for about 20 seconds. After they left people came into the cafe and were confused. “I was told there was ice cream” “yeah there was, but they weren’t interested in giving it, they were interested in the picture to prove they did their job and left.” Someone thought maybe they were worried it would melt, but there were freezers in the cafe they could use.
Later in the week we saw in the lobby all the pictures from the St Patrick’s day event. It was a slide show of different groups of people, all using the same props. Marketing just ran around taking pictures from one group to the next as fast as they could to make it look nice. It all felt hollow after.
[Friday Morning at 10AM]
<Coworker> We have a test that is urgent, and needs to get started quickly. Do you think we can get this part tested and get results by the end of the day?
<Hooovahh> Yeah maybe what do you want to run?
<Coworker> This needs to be turned on and tested with profile XYZ.
<Hooovahh> That profile takes 1 hour to run. If we drop everything we are doing we can set up your test, run the 1 hour and then get you a test report by the end of the day.
<Coworker> Well actually HQ wants the test looped 3 times.
<Hooovahh> Oh! Well then that is really cutting it close and I don’t know if we will be able to get it done today but we will get going on it right away.
<Coworker> Actually that 1 hour test has been set to a 3 hour test.
<Hooovahh> …okay
<Coworker> And we want a 2 hour rest between each cycle.
<Hooovahh> …
<Coworker> And actually we have a 72 hour rest after the test finishes to settle
<Hooovahh> …So let's add this up. 3 hour test, 2 hour rest, repeated 3 times is 15 hours, then a 72 hour rest is 87 hours of testing. It is 10AM, and you want the test results by 5PM today? Do you also possess a time machine?
<Coworker> Well HQ just really wants these results and they gave us until the end of the day to send it to them. My boss is yelling at me to get this done.
<Hooovahh> They sound like a really bad manager, have you considered quitting? The test will not be done until sometime next week. If there is a power outage or equipment failure expect it to take longer.
<Coworker> HQ is going to be really upset that you won’t have the test finished on time.
<Hooovahh> Good thing I don’t work for HQ they sound like irrational lunatics. Who do you work for?
<Coworker> HQ.
We used to get requests like this all the time where they didn't think through what they are asking. My boss has a similar interaction.
"I want this data sooner, is there any way I could get it faster?" "Ask me to start this for you yesterday"
HR Halloween Costume Kerfuffle
It was Halloween time and HR was encouraging everyone to wear costumes. We were going to have our All-Hands or Town Hall meeting where we all got together and gave updates on programs and company changes. Most of the costumes were simple, but a couple of really fun elaborate ones. Alex was a younger guy in our group and a bit of a partier. He dressed up in a full green-man skin tight suit. I tried not looking but I could tell it was highlighting the part of his body that maybe he wasn’t aware of.
The All-Hands meeting starts and HR talks about all of our great costumes and how he has a slide show of them. Then he hits play. The image of the first person comes up, then the image gets slowly zoomed in, then the next costume is shown, and it slowly zooms out. This repeats person after person. The thing is, the zoom level was in the center of the picture. And as the crowd watched we all realized what was happening. A new coworker would be shown then it would zoom in on their crotch, then zoom out over and over. Everyone in the crowd started snickering just a bit as each person would try to make a funny halloween face. In the back of my mind I remembered Alex’s costume. And sure enough up comes Alex in his skin tight green suit. But he was smart enough to cover his crotch with his hands, as he came up and the picture zoomed in on him the room erupted with laughter.
Afterwards the HR guy told me he just used a program to autogenerate the slides and the default settings just zoomed in on the center of the picture. He realized what it was doing but it was too late to fix it so he just hoped no one would notice…we did.
