[GreenKeys] Model 28/35 mainshaft doweling procedure

[tony.podrasky]

GE OMs;

I think everyone here, who was involved in ANY corporate
environment, is familiar with the quip:

*"WE'RE GOING TO KEEP HAVING THESE 2-HOUR MEETINGS EVERY DAY
  UNTIL WE FIGURE OUT WHY NOTHING IS GETTING DONE!"*

I worked for a computer company, that did really well when
they promoted people from within a group that they were a part
of - and made them managers [a novel concept: a manager who
ACTUALLY KNOWS what his people do for a living and what they
go thru to do their job] and then did really poorly when they
put a manager in charge of a group, who had no idea what his
group did - or went thru - to do their jobs.

We were assigned sites - and had to do a PM (preventive maintenance)
on the machines once a month.

Here's just two of dumb practices that the clueless managers
implemented that they had to unimplement:

We would go straight to one of our sites each morning and do the PM
on the machines before going in to the office. If we got a call while
doing the PM, it wouldn't make much of a difference since the PMs
usually only took an hour to do. Our rocket-scientist manager, who
was promoted from working on the shipping dock [this is not a "knock"
against someone who works in shipping & receiving - but putting
anyone who is unfamiliar with computers in charge of field engineers
really isn't a good fit] decided that we should all meet at the
office in the morning. I tried to explain why that would not be a
workable idea because the only time we can get the machine away
from the customer is before his work-day began - and there is no
reason for us to come into the office. Instead of considering
my advice or asking me for more information, he took it as a
challenge to his authority, and made it mandatory to come to the
office first.

Welllll - when the monthly report came out and our office was at
the bottom - wayyyy at the bottom of the list for having completed
their PMs, the whole office got in trouble and the regional manager
came down to yell at us. I wasn't about to tell him what I told
my manager - and then have my manager mad at me - so I just sat
their and took it.

[The next practice is similar to the one below]

So as sales kept selling machines, one rocket-scientist decided
that, instead of adding man-power after a set number of machines
were sold, they'd break us up into 4-man teams, and just add a
machine to each team as they came in, thinking that the site
would be owned by the team and therefore the team leader, when a
call came in, would give it to whomever was available. I asked for
more information of how that would work and they told me. Once again
I explained why that won't work - in fact, will be counter-productive,
and once again the manager said I was questioning his authority.
Now, bear in mind that this was in the 80's before cellphones. So my 
team is Tom, Dick, Harry, and Tony.

Dispatch pages Tom. Tom has to stop what he's doing. He picks up
the call - but can't handle it in the "guaranteed response" time frame.
Tom calls Dick, (now neither Tom or Dick are working). Dick can't
handle it either, so now Tom calls Harry. (now neither Tom nor Harry
is working). Harry can't take it so now Tom calls Tony, who is busy
as well. Tom makes Tony take the call. Tony explains that he has a
disk drive apart (the old washing machine sized drives) and is
replacing the heads from last night's head crash, and will be busy
until well into the afternoon. Tom makes Tony take the call anyway
- one of the reasons being that the customer is getting mad because
Tom is on the phone instead of working on his downed system - and his
employees can't do their work.

Wellll - when the monthly report came out and our office was at
the bottom for call-completion time AND, ESPECIALLY, for bad
customer satisfaction, the whole office got in trouble and
the regional manager came down and yelled at us.

So they implement a PLAN B: instead of dispatch giving the call to
Tom, and Tom calling everybody, Tom just says he's busy and to page
the next guy on the list (Dick). Well, not only are Tom, Dick, Harry,
and Tony getting paged, and having to stop what they're doing, but
now Dispatch has 4 times the work to do. Now, instead of telling
Tom we can't take the call, we have to hold for sometimes up to
30 minutes to get thru to dispatch. Now, not only are the field
engineers getting cranked-off, but the dispatches are catching
flak from the FEs having to hold for 30 minutes and are getting
stressed-out. Once again, I could see this coming - but by now
I've had enough of my boss getting mad at me for questioning
management's policy-making, and I let them do as they wish.

--

If this thread continues, I'll tell you about the hilarity
that ensues when you hire a person to run the parts room, and
tell them to get it in order - and instead of arranging the
parts by product line or part number - they arrange it by
the size of the box the part is in...

UE,
W6ESE - TONY
NNNN
ZCZC


On 06/27/2014 07:21 PM, Bruce Gentry wrote:
>
>
> On 6/27/14 9:33 PM, Don Robert House wrote:
>> Yes,
>>
>> As Teletype repairmen for Bell, we were expected to repair the
>> machines in less than two hours.

>> Sometimes this was impossible... made worse by AT&T calling to "see
>> how you are doing.

>        As a 32 year veteran of the elevator business, I would always
> tell those calling me for a "progress" report that they had just set me
> back two hours,

-- 
Excerpt from PODRASKY'S DICTIONARY of
"What They REALLY MEAN When They Say".
The definition of the term "IN THEORY":
Noun (scientific/technical talk): "Not Really".