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Quote:
Originally Posted by George130
ssshhh don't tell the missus, I work my fingers to the bone each day at work.
The other day we had an office injury when a paper airplane hit a person in the side of the head. He's off work now for 6 weeks, bring on the overtime.
This may be a dramatized post, or it may be the truth.
Over my working life I been in private and all 3 levels of government employment, federal was by far the worse for restructuring, name changing etc. One of the departments was known as the dept. of Name Changes.
Once upon a time, a very old and once respected Australian company and a new, progressive Japanese company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Parramatta River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be.
The Japanese team won by a mile.
Afterwards, the Australian team became discouraged by their loss and their morale sagged. Corporate Management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team of "Executives" was sent to investigate the problem and recommend corrective action and a recovery program.
Their conclusion: The problem was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, whereas the Australian team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. The Australian Corporate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to study the management structure of the team.
After some time and tens of millions of dollars spent, the consulting firm concluded that "too many people were steering and not enough were rowing. "To prevent losing to the Japanese team again the following year, the management structure was changed to "4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers and 1 Staff Steering Manager" and a new performance reward system for the person rowing the boat to provide more incentive to work harder and become an "Excellent Rated" performer. "We must give him empowerment and enrichment." That ought to do it.
The next year the Japanese team won by two miles.
The Australian company retrenched the rower for poor performance, sold all the oars, cancelled all capital investments for new equipment, halted development of a new canoe, awarded Special Recognition Awards to the consulting firm and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the company senior executives.
SOUND LIKE ANYWHERE YOU KNOW ?
Martyn
Thank god for private sector as I was once employed by the CSIRO mate what a joke,:D I was instructed to put thermostat controls into science blocks to make them think they had central heating in place, Clever Scientists responded with a thankyou email to head of Maintainace for the new found warmth,:D go figure as these clever chaps were paid Intelligent individuals,:o:o:o
PS this was way back in the early 80's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by timaus13
before the invention of the internet and email
Best one I experienced was when a former cleaner came into my classroom with a clipboard and started counting out loud. I asked her what she was doing. I was told that she had been promoted out of the cleaning area and now had the job of counting fluorescent tubes, that's right - counting fluorescent tubes!
She was soon made redundant and paid to leave. On her final day I went to the usual send off. I asked her more about what happened to get her promotion. She told me that she caught the Director at the time hard at it with his Educational Assistant in the Director's office one evening. That's why she was moved out of the way and paid to leave :eek2:.
Quote:
Originally Posted by p38arover
Mate I have worked out that promotion in the public service area still relys on the old mates act.
During my time I had 4 promotion interviews, the first I lost out to a bloke who ultimatley became my boss, on the morning of the interview, i watched him type out a restructure proposal he had obtained from someone else, word for word, he used it as a hand up, it got him the job, i had no hope in an appeal.
This bloke now is off sick with internal affairs after him.
the second one was a regional position,the bloke who got the job had the convenor as one of his referees.
no hope on that one.( he got charged and resigned 2 years later.) then they restructored.
the third one, didn't get an interview, why because i didn't use the STAR format for the application, was talked out of an appeal because it could have embarressed the convenor who was a fairly senior officer, as the star format wasn't mandatory.
the fourth one, didn;t get submitted because they changed and withdrew the position.
Its easy to be cynical, but when you see it time and time again, it makes you wonder.
I guess its no different in the private sector. probably worst as there are very little by way of checks and balances.
Glad i am out of it.
my rant
john
Yes but I've met you in your previous workplace! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by dobbo
Ron
In my time in OTC I was promoted into positions about which I knew nowt and over one of the blokes in the area.
However, they were lower level management positions and that was something at which what I was reasonably good.
I relied heavily on my technical staff and when I got the kudos for a job well done, I made sure that management knew that the staff did the work and that they also deserved acknowledgment.
I don't know of one area in which I was the manager where the staff didn't eventually accept and respect me. That doesn't mean that it was all plain sailing at first - especially when they thought that one of their number had missed out on the job!
Ron
John you can only refuse promotion for so long, in my case many years. However a couple of years ago before one of those idiotic accreditation audits, I was seconded to a position that needed to be done prior to the audit now they won't let me back whence I came because I did it too well.Quote:
Originally Posted by JDNSW
Diana
Little bit earlier than that.Quote:
Originally Posted by dobbo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANETQuote:
- E-mail: In 1971, Ray Tomlinson of BBN sent the first network email [3]. By 1973, 75% of the ARPANET traffic was email.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
Makes good for a definition of academics, too lazy to lick a stamp so they invented email.:D
Cheers
Simon