Here's the thing.
As some of you know, I have a workplace nemesis, and have for some time. For the sake of internet anonymity, I refer to him simply as my Archenemy. The reasons for our clashes are not critical to understand this post, except for this:
This man is as dumb as toast.
In the wake of his divorce, he was loudly discussing in the breakroom about how he didn't know how to make a sandwich. Seriously. Seriously.
Anyway, Archenemy works in the same department that I do: order-picking. In the order-packing department, the supervisor has The Black Book. This is a log of all the errors the pickers make that are discovered by the packing department. Shortage, overages, expired product, wrong product, that sort of thing.
Archenemy has been there for over ten years. Archenemy has the most entries in The Black Book by far. Archenemy has so many entries, the supervisor had to add in an additional page in his section.
Mathematics lesson time:
365 days in a year. (365)
Subtract weekends. (365-102=263)
Subtract paid company holidays. (263-7=256)
Subtract sick time, vacation, and personal time. (256-20=236)
That's 236 workdays for the average individual in a given year.
Black Book entries for the year started August 1. Archenemy's error count as of April 30?
TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHT.
Now, how this guy still has a job is a discussion for another time, but with the errors looking to eclipse days worked (and the free time for me to do the math), a thought came to me:
Why not use this guy's stupidity for my own amusement?
Lo, The Archenemy Error Pool was born! Recruiting 3 other fed-up peers/soulless monsters, we each turned in a reasonable guess for mistakes to be made in the month of May. 20 workdays. Closest to actual errors wins. One dollar apiece is on the line. Small stakes, but it's really about the pride and bragging rights rather than the cash.
I didn't think my guess of 25 errors would be at the bottom of the list, but apparently my peers have even less faith in my Archenemy than I do. The high guess is 47 errors.
If today (day 1) is any indication, Archenemy is on track for 60 errors this month. Who woulda thunk it? He's intensely stupid.
The only question I'm wrestling with now: was starting this error pool more or less tasteless than the Temp Worker Longevity Pools I've started in the past?
oh you.
ReplyDeleteif you don't know who this is then we can no longer be friends.
Brian is supposed to be studying!!!
ReplyDeleteBrian: for being "first" (and not studying), you are the recipient of 1 (one) Internet Throat-Punch. Nobody likes "first-guy". Don't be "first-guy".
ReplyDeleteI completely approve...the guy needs to go!
ReplyDeleteWhat's your count, comparatively?
ReplyDeleteAs of yesterday, my error count for the year was 28. 9 of those were out-and-out mispicks, mostly due to another department stocking the shelves plain ol' wrong. I don't have a breakdown of the other 19, but most of them were shortages, so I'm not costing the company as much money by shipping out bonus product for free.
ReplyDeleteMy errors come in spurts - nothing for a month, then 2 to 3 in one day. Just gotta fix that day...
It's kind of sad that a business with clear metrics like that isn't using them. If you make about two errors per month they could probably lower their error rate by 80% just by firing this one guy! And replace him with someone cheaper too.
ReplyDeleteWhat is your workplace culture like, what would your boss say when you brought this up to him? At my work they'll just disrespect error-makers in the office chat but never approach anyone to say "Hey, you need to improve."
Sadly, my workplace is like yours. It's much easier to hide in the office and ignore problems instead of having a potential confrontation.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me when I say that "management" deserves to be in quotes.