Predator Press
[LOBO]
Weird day.
While not still sick, I hadn’t eaten since Saturday; I was a little pasty and shaky. But even feeling 85%, showing up would have been better than taking a second day off.
And there’s a meeting.
I was notified, but that was
Friday: at that time more than two days in the future.
In the workplace, I don’t really plan anything beyond 24 hours besides "be available."
And -further fueling my disinterest- the meeting is about ISO Certification.
“ISO” is an abbreviation for the
International Organization for Standardization or something. In short, ISO is not about FUBAR. I deal in FUBAR. My company would gladly
pay me in FUBAR, but you cannot exchange FUBAR for goods and services anymore (the Bush Administration is in it's "lame duck" phase).
I had heard of the
International Organization for Standardization or whatever through the company channels before. I thought,
Okay, it’s an International Certification process that we’re going through. Totally normal, and probably desirable to do International Business, right? But we’re not going to trot out our centuries-old and carefully guarded secrets are we? Or the super cool advanced technologies we’re working on?
Within an hour, I was outlining spreadsheets of our centuries-old and carefully guarded secrets, with the SuperCool advanced technologies bulleted and itemized.
Frankly, it felt a bit like corporate espionage.
There is a Very Simple Trinity to
any business it seems to me:
a) Good
b) Fast, and
c) Cheap
Pick two.
-Is that so
complex?
But I dunno. ISO felt weird. It felt like Scientology meets Corporate America on a series of PowerPoint slides, and each deeper layer seemed as wordy and impotent as the next. After a handful of corporate buzzwords, my brain shut off. Wanna see my narcolepsy in action? Just swing a laser pointer and say “Opportunity” three times in an animated manner.
BTW here’s a tip for you PowerPointers: every pie chart you show better have at
least four pieces of amusing animation to counter the mind-numbing and hold my interest. In fact, you should consider using
porn before of using a pie chart ... at least I wouldn't glaze over and miss all those cute animations.
Look. Just don’t use pie charts. Did Van Halen use pie charts?
And okay fine ... maybe this
"International Organization for Standardization" or whatever is precisely what is stopping greedy Americans from exporting lead-laden toys and poison pet food to other countries.
Thus -under vast and crushing International pressure- I will amend my list:
a) Good
b) Fast
c) Cheap, and
d) Porn
There.
Happy?
Feel free to discuss and ponder this among yourselves. My presentation is next.
I have to go set up the flash pans.
