My Life in a Dilbert Comic Strip

In engineering, life imitates art, or something like that. On a nearly daily basis something happens around here that goes down like a storyboard straight out of Scott Adams' drawing room. This, however, just made me smack my face.

So yesterday, while I was at an industrial facility performing some equipment inspections (outside, in the wonderful 90 degree spring day we were having), my boss texts me "Hey, we need someone to go to city hundred of miles away, in a different country next week to support some testing. Plz call when u get a chance." (Yes, my boss texts like a motherberkeleying 14 year old) After I finished what I was doing, I found some shade and called him back. He lays out what's going on, apologizes for the short notice, and asks me if I can help. I told him I was pretty busy but would check and let him know.

Now, granted, I was pretty sure I was going to turn him down. We've been inundated with work just in my normal activities, and even yesterday's trip out to do inspections was an emergency, last-minute sort of thing- which pushed all my other obligations even further back. So jetting off to a far-away place for a couple of days wasn't going to sit well. On top of that, I have two young kids at home, one of whom is still pretty fresh and in diapers, and a wife who's already just hanging on to her sanity by a thread with me home on a regular basis. But, I wanted to talk it over with my other bosses, all of whom confirmed the thoughts above.

About an hour later, after I'd left the job site, I texted him back and politely declined. No big deal, he said, just asking around.

Today, back at my office, I was talking to another guy involved with that project, and he told me that (we'll call him Colbert ) had been tasked with traveling to this facility (and had been involved with this international project for some time now) and supporting the testing- and had known about it for a month. But, Colbert's passport had expired, and he hadn't renewed it yet, and that's why he was unable to go. So, Colbert's job involves regular travel to foreign countries...and he let his passport expire. Sharp.

On top of that, a few minutes ago I got an email from another co-worker who apparently my boss was able to sucker into supporting the testing. He writes me, "Hey, This is other guy. I have been asked to travel to Foreign Country next week in your place. Can you give me some background information on this project? What exactly am I to do with the vendor? Witness testing? Verify testing completion? Are there any documents I need to review?"

IN YOUR PLACE. Yeah. Boss-man must have told him that I was supposed to go and other guy was taking my place. And, that I somehow knew everything about this project (I've only been very tangentially involved) and to ask me what to do.

I wrote back to other guy and told him this, and he laughed.

You can get a passport renewal in 24 hrs. I did.

Love Dilbert. I strive to be the Chimera of Wally and the Pointy Haired Boss.

Strangely, my life is unfolding like Gary Larson's Far Side.

Slippery wrote: You can get a passport renewal in 24 hrs. I did.

Quick! Get Colbert on the phone!

I have a project going on at work. Step one should have taken about a week. The foreman of the dept doing the work allowed step one to take 3.5 weeks. I kept going after him about it and he said he would take care of it. Now we are at the final stage, scrambling to make deadline, and one of the parts got scrapped last night. The project was supposed to ship today. When i asked the aforementioned foreman about the scrapped part he gets indignant and says "This is what happens when you make us scramble to try and make deadlines." You're right, my fault.

The funny thing is, Scott Adams was middle management before he went cartoonist. Not an engineer.

I have maintained that I have learned more about business from reading Dilbert than from 4 years at Texas A&M University College of Business.

On the passport thing, I fly a couple times a month for work and it seems as if I see someone stranded with an outdated passport AT THE AIRPORT once a month. How do you let that slide?

In reply to gearheadmb:

Ha, sounds similar, but sort of reversed, to an ongoing problem I have with a particular supervisor. I'll send an email weeks in advance saying "Hey Colton, I need half a day on X machine in two weeks, please let me know when we can get that scheduled." No response. Couple days later, another follow up email "Hey Colton, I REALLY need an answer, I owe timing updates to my customer and need to schedule my own time as well. Please respond ASAP." No response.

I'll complain to Colton's supervisor and get nothing but excuses...he's been really busy (no E36 M3, we all are and most of us much busier than him), had machines down, ect. I'll complain to my supervisor, who shares my disdain of Colton, but he runs into the same roadblock with Colton's supervisor.

This will continue until, usually, a week or two AFTER the date I requested (with plenty of advance), when Colton will tell me VERBALLY (so there's no record in case he later decides to back out) with no more than a day advance notice when I can have the machine. At this point, the project is invariably way behind and I am indeed scrambling to make a deadline, working long hours, ect.

This is far from the only, or the biggest, issue with Colton, and yet he somehow keeps gaining responsibility. I would have thought his house of cards would have come crashing down by now, and it is slowly, however his direct supervisor is too dumb to realize because Colton is a very adept bullE36 M3ter (his only true skill as far as I can tell.) I'm now documenting issues in preparation to go all the way to the top of the food chain. Colton will get what's coming to him, sooner or later.

chandlerGTi wrote: On the passport thing, I fly a couple times a month for work and it seems as if I see someone stranded with an outdated passport AT THE AIRPORT once a month. How do you let that slide?

Eh, it happens. On my last trip to Europe i got stopped from checking in because my passport expired in 2 months, 3 weeks.. it had to be valid for 3 months after the departure date. Doh! I thought that the, you know, expiration date would have meant something, I didn't realize that it was practically useless three months early!

I stopped by the passport office the next day and got a new one within about two hours or so and made the next day's flight.

I once had the pointy haired boss. He really looked like him too! We used to confuse him by getting excited over strange things, like Olympic Curling

mad_machine wrote: I once had the pointy haired boss. He really looked like him too! We used to confuse him by getting excited over strange things, like Olympic Curling

You shut your dick. Olympic Curling is the best winter Olympic game.

Mom used to think the guy that did Family Circus was spying on us when I was a kid. She sort of had a point.

volvoclearinghouse wrote:

mad_machine wrote: I once had the pointy haired boss. He really looked like him too! We used to confuse him by getting excited over strange things, like Olympic Curling

You shut your dick. Olympic Curling is the best winter Olympic game.

Without the language, that should be in say what.

Best response ever.

My boss at my last job, who was also the company owner, would go incommunicado for a week or more at a time sometimes. Not answering his phone or replying to texts/emails...this was in regards to urgent customer issues that we couldn't proceed on without his reply, and we'd wait days or weeks before something that should and could have been resolved in a day, instead took days or weeks. This occurred frequently, almost constantly.

Then he'd call a meeting and have some new gee-whiz idea that was going to make us all kinds of money. Yet, when we went along and tried to implement it, he again refused to give us any guidance or have any more than a very rare followup.

It was truly a case of a company that continued to exist in spite of its self, and only because of the hard work the rest of us put in attempting to keep the ship afloat.

chandlerGTi wrote: On the passport thing, I fly a couple times a month for work and it seems as if I see someone stranded with an outdated passport AT THE AIRPORT once a month. How do you let that slide?

Problem is, they won't let you travel if your passport is set to expire in 6 months or less.

BUT - that should be well known, so people just need to assume that it expires 6 months earlier than it says.

In reply to Strizzo:

Problem is, that doesn't seem to be consistent. According to WonkoTheSane, it had to be valid for 3 months. 3 months? 6 months? The date on the passport? Let's make it at the capricious whim of some third-tier government employee!

Do you work for the Government?

Thanks for making my day!!!

I'd better check my passport expiration date.

Pete Gossett wrote: It was truly a case of a company that continued to exist in spite of its self...

I don't know how they do it, but the company I work for seems to work the same way...

(deleted longer rant. Highlights included over-focus on safety, having to wear splash goggles to the bathroom, still having to wear safety vests indoors, office space, and so on )

In reply to Hungary Bill:

Does your company have some kind of 'voluntary' compliance order because it got sued 20yrs ago? I work in the service industry and managers are always stressing guest experience yet they are present at most 10% of the time the guest is there whilst the $2.77 an hour employees are trying to answer questions about $400 bottles of wine and even more difficult questions about $40 bottles that come to find out are 86'd that night.

Ugh. I do not miss the service industry.... $2.32 an hour in TX...

No voluntary compliance that i know of. I think they figure safety on the front is better than a law suit in the end, they just go about it in completely idiotic ways

volvoclearinghouse wrote: In reply to Strizzo: Problem is, that doesn't seem to be consistent. According to WonkoTheSane, it had to be valid for 3 months. 3 months? 6 months? The date on the passport? Let's make it at the capricious whim of some third-tier government employee!

It depends on the country you're traveling to. It's a good habit to check with the Dept of State before you go. Worst case scenario is what happened to my friend. They didn't catch it in his hometown nor his point of departure for the international flight. Immigration in Costa Rica held him and pointed out that his passport expired in 86 days and it had to be valid for 90. They put him on the next flight back to the states. On top of that a few months later Costa Rica changed their policy and said it only had to be valid for 30 days.