Welcome to the Lounge

Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote:

1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual.

Long, long ago (1973), at a company that's blessedly vanished from this mortal plane.

Managements typically don't want to admit to certain facts:

• That engineers are not interchangeable modules;
  
• That engineers require conditions conducive to concentration;
  
• That engineers' work cannot be (and therefore must not be) scheduled;
  
• That engineers are habitually appreciation-deprived, and over time will come to resent it;
  
• That a dress code for engineers who never face a customer is patent idiocy that impedes productivity;
  
• That an engineer whose head is lolling back and whose feet are up on his desk is probably hard at work and should not be disturbed.
  

In short, managements tend to assume that what we do is indistinguishable from the day laborers Frederick Taylor observed for his time-and-motion studies. Those that learn better sometimes survive their earlier follies; the rest have sown the wind and reap the whirlwind.

Indeed, it sometimes gets infinitely worse. A true story: I happen to be a practicing Catholic. One fine day about thirty years ago, during my company-designated lunch hour, I was silently praying the Rosary, beads in my hand, when a manager came to my cubicle and loudly demanded that I "quit that nonsense" and attend to something he had thought up a few minutes earlier.

I'm still not certain why I let him live.

Why so many engineers yearn to enter management is something I'll never understand.

Bend                   S
Lincoln                ABE
right                  R
and blow one's horn?   TOOT
Hard                   H
hymn heads off         pSALM (remove first letter)
working                ON