Fire drills on the road

What a crazy week. In St. Paul for meetings and training, with a full schedule, and then pandemonium breaks out back in Home Office. Critical systems aren't working, and money is missing!

SR. MGMT: "FIND THE PROBLEM!!!"

ME (and several others like me): "I'm on it, sir! Should I cancel my other meetings, sir?"

SR. MGMT: "WHAT?!?! Of course not. Do both! Do everything! Everything is top priority!"

ME, etal: "Certainly, sir! Everything! Immediately, sir!"

ME, etal: "You, Sr. Flunkie, FIND THE PROBLEM! I have important meetings to attend. Keep me informed of your progress."

Sr. Flunkie: "Sir, yes sir! Right away, sir!"

SR. F: "Junior Flunkie! Stop surfing the internet on company time and FIND THE PROBLEM!"

JR. F: "Sir! Oh, I mean, Ma'am, sir! One moment, Ma'am! [hastily puts up 'brb' and 'away' message on AIM] I assure you I was not surfing the 'net, Ma'am, merely communicating something business-related to a co-worker on a non-standard-but-tacitly-approved application widely used in our company for communications. If you please, Ma'am, I believe the problem is THIS, Ma'am!" [explains problem in indecipherable 20-something hipster techie lingo]

SR. F (not wanting to admit lack of hipness, turns the tables): "No, I think YOU are the problem, JR. F! You must tell me why you are NOT the problem!"

JR. F (seeing bluff is called, adopts non-generation-specific approach, namely passes the buck to someone else): "Sir! Or rather Ma'am, Sir! I am not the problem because this other Jr. Flunkie over here is the problem, sir, Ma'am!"

SR. F.: "Of course! That's sensible. Very good, Jr. Flunkie. Dismissed." [Jr. flunkie immediately IM's other flunkies about the newest management fire drill in progress]

Sr. F. to me: "Sir, I have found the problem and it is not me or my flunkies, but these other flunkies over here. They, though excessive use of communications software, are causing an unexpected drain on our critical applications' bandwidth space partition, sir. I'll ask for our partition to be increased, sir."

ME: "Very well. But why wasn't I informed of this before, Sr. F.?"

SR. F.: "Because sir, as you well know, there is never a problem until you say there is one, sir."

ME: "Ah yes, of course. Very good, Sr. Flunkie. You are dismissed."

ME and many others like me simultaneously to Sr. Mgmt.: "Sirs, we have found the problem, and it is a systems error, beyond all of our collective control. It may indeed be an undetected siphoning off of our essential bandwidth, sir, by excessive internal communications applications such as Instant Messaging, which has been rumored to cause cyber-farts in the ether, sir. The systems people should have discovered this during testing, sir, don't you think?"

SR. MGMT.: "Of course, they should have. But, they don't know the business like we do - they are merely programmers. So, in this instance, no heads have to roll. It's just the nature of the world, son. If you saw the BIG PICTURE, like we do in Sr. Mgmt., you wouldn't have gotten this all blown out of proportion the way you did. Really, you can't let routine glitches like cyber-farts cause you to lose focus. It's nothing more than electronic gas, and this too shall pass. :) Go back to your duties now, and let this be a lesson to you."

ME, etal.: "Thank you sir. I deeply appreciate the chance to learn at your feet." Retreats, bowing and scraping.

Ok, so maybe it wasn't exactly like that, but it WAS a bit of a fire drill, getting all kinds of people riled up over a systems problem that SHOULD have been caught in testing. Personally, I think heads SHOULD roll.

But we have way too many unfilled openings as it is. We can't afford for heads to roll. Like the personal ads lament: "Where have all the good men (or women) gone?" What they really mean, of course, is: "where are all the men/women who see past my obvious flaws to my inherent value and desireability, and give me the respect, yea verily, even the admiration I deserve?" Which is pretty much what we want when we go to hire people. I think our company needs more slavishly worshipful grunts to do our bidding. Where have they all gone?