Farcus by David Waisglass and Gordon Coulthart for December 04, 2021

During my white collar years, there were many who had no business sitting in the Manager office!!!

A different reason for those kneepads popped into mind.

Knee pads for “begging”?

When I was in management, we had to know how to do the work to be able to teach the clerks.

Actually worked with a guy who was never at his desk. He would walk around with a folder or two and act like he was going somewhere important. He was the only one who thought he was fooling all of us.

Short step ladder and a clipboard.

They forgot the knives for backstabbing your colleagues.

I worked for a machine tool builder, DrillUnit. The “sales acknowledgement form” was the basis of ALL communications betwixt departments. It told billing what had been sold. It told engineering what changes would need to be made. It told purchasing what parts to order. It told production what to build. It told shipping what color to paint it, how to ship it, and where it was going. It told parts what part to send when years later the customer broke something. These units would run for decades as long as you regularly changed the oil and did not run the pressure over the limit. The sales manager would not fill out the form. Instead he would tell engineering that the new unit was our basic unit with different spindle, different motor, different switches, and different valves. I would reply, then it is not our basic unit.I do not know whether or not he ever learned how to complete that form.

Middle Management always the first to get laid off, You aren’t in the old boys club and you don’t actually do the work

Keeping the nose clean and brown-nosing at the same time is out of discussion.