| Dealing with "The Man"
Posted: 7/30/2006 9:24:58 PM | The Government Employee (aka "The Man")
An Alberta cowboy was herding his cattle in a remote pasture when suddenly a Brand new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a 'Brioni' suit, 'Gucci' shoes, 'Ray Ban' sunglasses and 'YSL' tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"
The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure! Why not? Show me your stuff."
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his cell phone, and surfs the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.
The young man opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full color report on his Hi-tech miniaturized HP Laser Jet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says,"You have exact total of 1586 cows and calves."
"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your job is, will you give me back that animal you just put in your trunk?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"
"You're a consultant for the Federal Government." says the cowboy.
"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a damn thing about cattle. Now give me back my friggin' DOG."
Being in the over 45+ group this story was especially fun to me.
I have to stand back, look at the high tech. world, especially when I am dealing with big business, and government, and seek the funny side of things, or I would be in danger of loosing my sanity.
Back in Feb., I admit my last remaining family member to a Canadian hospital. I could tell she was terminal, but the hospital didn't (wrongly) make the same diognose for several days. Idiots where constantly complaining to me that she wasn't co operating with eating, getting out of bed etc. They couldn't seem to get it though their heads that she couldn't eat because she couldn't breath, and it wasn't going to get better.
Hello, this is a hospital - how basic is "can't breath, so can't eat, walk etc. Long story...
I was phoning when I wasn't at the hospital trying to get someone to diognose her properly.
Many busy signals on the hospital ward phone system where followed by a recording saying "Leave you name, and what you are calling about, and we will decide if we will call you back". Swear that is what the message said.
I was about ready to go postal.
To calm myself down, I composed a message in my head for my business phone answering system that went something like "Leave you name and what you want, and I will decide if you are important enough to call back".
Then I thought about all the high maintenance clients that I would like to hear that message. Too bad, there isn't a button on the phones, that when a call from high maintenance clients call, that I could push and have them hear that message.
If I hadn't stepped back, and found something funny about the situation, I would have lost it.
Any insane dealing with "the Man" that you would care to share fellow posters? | |
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| Dealing with The Man
Posted: 7/30/2006 11:24:41 PM | The story was funny! I'm sorry about the issues you had in the hospital.
I would also like to know (for those who have voted to delete), where the insulting of or bashing of other posters is? I see no other poster referenced in the thread. Am I just blind? | |
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| Dealing with The Man
Posted: 7/31/2006 1:05:55 AM | | Mor, your post is very reasonable, why others want to dismiss it is rediculous. I could share a LOT of similar horror stories about the Gov here when I first got MS........... | |
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| Dealing with The Man
Posted: 7/31/2006 7:34:16 AM | Funny you should mention it.
I happen to be expert in telcom processes. My phone system will recognize your caller ID, Look up the greeting created just for you and send the call to me or to voicemail. If I get the call, before my phone rings, I have a screen pop on my computer that Identifies you and keeps track of all the previous discussions we've had.
I have auto attendans and messaging systems just for sharing in specific client/vendor relationships.
The systems for fixing these problems are cheap and easy to use, but they replace the need to have such large maintenance staffs. Typically, The people responsible for buying the phone systems don't know what the're buying from people that don't kow what they're selling. | |
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| Dealing with The Man
Posted: 7/31/2006 8:02:08 AM | | That's a really good story.The only dealings that I've had with "the man " is having my state income taxes audited a couple of years ago. That was stressful but it turned out well. They ended up owing ME more money. | |
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| Dealing with The Man
Posted: 7/31/2006 8:04:47 AM | Good subject for a thread.........and Kevin..that's funny!
Sometimes Govt. is like a vicious circle........always biting us in the ass. You do gotta wonder sometimes??  | |
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| Dealing with The Man
Posted: 7/31/2006 8:20:33 AM | Those who voted to delete-------have "the Man" mentality.
I actually expected some posters to vote to delete. It proved my theory.
Certain people are perfect for the job, because they can only think in the form of prearranged protocal. Give them something a little different, and they become confused.
"The Man" =s, big business and government. Countless meetings are held, and dollars are spent, to set up rules with which to operate. These rules are taught to employees. The employees in turn, try to work within the rules, and parriot out information in situations where the rule doesn't fit the situation.
Of course, it is impossible to make up rules for every situation in business and government. New situations evolve every day.
Problem is, once protocal is set up in big business, the staff trying to use the rules to do their work, have no authority to apply the rules to the current problem. Often these people don't have to education to even understand the problem.
This is an area in which big business and governments fail to produce cost effective solutions.
Small businesses are directly involved with their clients, therefore, can much more easily treat each case on an individual basis.
I have been dealing with the same banking institute since I left high school. Been doing my personal and business banking with the same branch, in the small town I live in since 89'. I have a history with many individual employees. This saves time and money.
Unfortunately, all the expensive computer technology of the banking system, does not prevent an employee for entering data incorrectly. I can and do walk into my local branch, put down paperwork, indicate that the bank is in error, and they had better fix it NOW.
Because of the small business environment, this is easy to do. Were I to use the phone system, which is directly hooked up to head office in Toronto, (bypassing the branch) I would have to talk to multiple employees, over a period of several days, repeating the whole story over and over, and chances are the problem wouldn't be solved.
The headoffice in their wisdom, have had the main local phone numbers at the branch diverted to head office in Toronto. The employees of the local branch are aware of the difficulties of trying to work through head office, as they are treated in the same ineffective way as the clients are by head office. Most client of the branch have the private phone numbers of branch employees, and no one uses the main phone lines that are diverted to head office.
"The Man" has become a model of how things don't work. | |
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