Zagadka's Site

At the moment I am in a mood that could only be described as "the centre of a nuclear explosion". I just obliterated the cordless handset I was talking to my area manager on.

It seems this week is the anti-Tim week. Not only am I now open for incredibly stupid hours that will cost the company more in wages than they could possibly recoup in gross profit and inevariably end up pissing away my time waiting for customers to arrive in an empty store, but also, the company feels that it can throw out my possessions left in my previous store without asking.

I spoke to one of the full-timers from the store and they had said that all the *stock* was moved out of my box, that's fair enough, it’s stock I had stashed to buy later, I don't own it yet, put it back on the floor to sell or in the storeroom. They said that they didn't know where the rest went though. I called the Area Manager that "tidied" my box of stuff and asked where it's contents had ended up. The Area Manager had thrown it all out. I asked him about my Tandy sign. He said that he had thrown that out too. I then replied "You could have called me". To which he replied he was "not in the mood to call anyone after losing $18K out of that store in stolen goods".

Is that *my* fault? The answer is simply: absofuckingloutly NOT. If he was a professional, as he claims to be, he would have called regardless of his mood because he would have been able to control himself. So, my bits and pieces of my old store, sentimental, important things got thrown in the garbage without my consent. How the fuck am I going to get another Tandy sign? Steal it from another store - yeah, that won't get me in trouble; have the Area Manager in question get one made, very, very, VERY unlikely. Even if I do get another one, it wont be *my* Tandy store's Tandy sign, there will be no sentimental attachment to a copy. Why the fuck would I even be concearned if it didn't have sentimental value.

After questioning him about his heartless, ill-conceded tidy up he reminded me that the area needed to make an Extra $60K today and that I need to pull a $5K day to help this - all of this in a tone like he had done nothing wrong. Shit, that motherfucker didn’t even apologize. Fuck that. He can go fuck himself and come here and sell shit in my store, I'm not. Is he that stupid that he could not grasp the clear anger in my voice and realise that asking me to do anything for him would be stupid, and, it probably would not get done anyway?

I have no chance to achieve budget anyway. This christmas is NOT going to be the big christmas that the retail big-wigs think it's going to be. To add insult to injury he knows I have no chance at $5K in 8 hours in a god damn Tandy store. I am not helping him do anything. I'm not helping any other stores do anything either, I have enough of my own problems. Other stores that feel that can use my store as a stationary cache, fuck them, they can re-inflate their shrivelled little brains and make sure that they order stationary {bags, ticket paper etc} by themselves.

That stuff comes out of my budget impacting on MY bottom line, not theirs. I already haven't a piss-weak chance in hell of making budget and getting a bonus, but, if I came close and missed because of an overspend in stationary, rest asured, I would Deck the Manager that took that stationary from my store. My bonus would be $200.

This leads me to the second anti-Tim event of the week. My wife is pregnant, so we go through the usual tests and stuff without a hitch. At 20 weeks (now) we had to get an ultrasound done to identify any growth defects. We waited a whole hour and a half after our appointment time and finally go in, add to that the 30 minutes we were early.

This was of course a big problem as they had asked my Wife to drink water and have a full bladder for the ultrasound. So, she downed 4 glasses of water before we left. The problem was, she couldn’t retain all of that for the extra hour and a half that it took for the nurse to see us. Strike 1.

So, we get in there, the nurse appears to be pre-occupied, in a hurry and just generally narky. We go through the tests and she takes 50 or so pictures of different pieces of anatomy to measure and check. I’m no doctor or ultrasound operator but to me, the pictures looked pretty out of focus… Twice the nurse, over the duration of thaking the 50 or so pictures asked my Wife to empty out a bit of her bladder, and then entirely empty it. This may have been why the images weren’t clear. Strike 2.

The doctor comes in to examine some of the images. The nurse had obviously done a shit job as the doctor herself started to take a few shots because she could not see what she needed to see in the shots that the nurse took. That’s fine. The doctor finishes what she’s doing and then after a brief flick through the images gives the OK for us to leave. I think it was "It looks OK, you don’t have to wait outside for the results".

My Wife had an appointment the next day, what did we see on the report, nothing other than a long-winded explanation that, summarised, said that the baby’s nose bone might be too short and that another ultrasound would be required because the images weren’t clear enough for a proper diagnosis. This brings me to my point. If I were a doctor, I wouldn’t draw a conclusion on poor data, I would not put my name to it.

Why the fuck would she do that? Raising possible false alarm. My Wife’s on the ceiling worrying about it now, that’s just what she does and you can’t blame her for that really. If it were up to me, I would ask for another ultrasound before I drew a conclusion or provided my diagnosis.

I am a programmer and I also work on electronics – what is the rule? GIGO! Garbage In, Garbage Out. If I am working on program based around a database and all the records are crap, or if I don’t qualify my user input and don’t throw errors when inputs are incorrect I have rubbish data. If I have rubbish data, I get rubbish results. I’m working on an audio amplifier. If the pre-amplifier throws a noisy signal to the power-amp, the resulting signal and the output will me noisy wont it.

FUCKING GIGO! It's not a hard concept...

I thought doctors were supposed to be smart people. I’m sure she probably knows a lot about medicine, what about common sense?! Why not mention to us, before we leave, that the images might be too fuzzy to draw an accurate conclusion? Afraid of losing face? Fuck you, fuck your face and tell the truth. I hate people that feel that they need to sugar coat things or alter the truth in order to report results that people may not want to hear or in order to protect themselves - even both.

It’s easier and better for all if the truth is told the first time. Another work example, I manage a store. My area manager may not want to hear that I had say, a stereo stolen off the shelf. I can cover it up, it’s easy, yeah, "all the stock is here Area Manager". What if a full stock take was done by a party other than me? Who’s fucked then? Me, because I committed fraud by concealing a loss.

Back to the store manager’s perspective, wouldn’t you want your stock levels to be accurate? I know I do. Cop a bit of an upset phone call and that’s it, but everything is square, shit happens. Take it on the chin and stop being a fucking bitch, it’s more important to the business to have accurate stock levels. It’s not like I’m going to shout at the doctor for her nurse not doing a good job, in fact I’d do the opposite, I actually would appreciate the honesty.

It’s not hard. Where are the controls that prevent a doctor from fucking you around? I get fired and referred to the Police if I commit fraud in the company.

It’s not fucking fair.