Journal Entries
*grumble* *snort*
Posted Apr 13, 2003
I went to bed feeling fine, and woke up five hours later with a stinking cold. How did that happen? 
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Latest reply: Apr 13, 2003
A fairy tale.
Posted Apr 7, 2003
Once upon a time, there were two companies. Let's call them A & B. No, better: let's call them Chas & Dave.
The hero of our story, let's call him Dr E Vibenstein, was employed by ChasCo Ltd, owners of a range of call centres and data processing centres. ChasCo had a contract to process credit card applications on behalf of The Dave Corporation, a medium-sized financial institution. ChasCo received the forms and entered the information into computers; the computers decided who would get the cards; and DaveCorp took care of the tedious financial stuff. Simple enough so far.
Now then. As part of the meticulously-negotiated contract between ChasCo and DaveCorp, DaveCorp's so-called Quality Control department checked a specified percentage of all the applications processed by ChasCo each week. If the amount of errors in these applications was found to be higher than that agreed in the contract, DaveCorp was allowed to take back some of the money they should be paying ChasCo for processing the applications. And this was all reasonably well and good, until the day that the amount of errors DaveCorp had been finding began to rise. Spectacularly.
The initial effect of this increase was for A Very Important Boss Person at ChasCo to turn various shades of purple, and demand that we work harder, faster and more accurately, all at the same time. This was met with much wailing, gnashing of teeth and obscene hand gestures from the employees, who complained bitterly that we were working as hard, fast and accurately as humanly possible, and that it wasn't fair and nobody loved us and we wished we were dead, that would show them.
And so it went on, for several weeks, with stress levels and the error rate still rising exponentially, and the workforce of ChasCo complaining that they were working themselves into the ground, that DaveCorp must be cheating, and that the Very Important Boss Person could get it right up him.
Then, with tempers flaring and the threat of a dirty protest hanging in the air, the employees of ChasCo were called to a secret meeting. At this meeting, the Very Important Boss Person explained that the error rate was unfeasibly high compared to previous error rates based on similar figures and all sorts of technical and financial jargon, which had led him to the conclusion that ChasCo was being royally shafted by DaveCorp.
However, before the employees could laugh and point and say "We told you so," the Very Important Boss Person announced that ChasCo had, therefore, told DaveCorp that they didn't want their contract anymore, and that ChasCo had lots of other offers on the table, and DaveCorp could jolly well go and get someone else to do their silly credit cards.
And with that, all was once again well with the employees of ChasCo, and they could smile and laugh and process applications in relative peace, until they suddenly realised that they had no idea what they would be doing once the DaveCorp contract ran out in August.
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Latest reply: Apr 7, 2003
Procrastination.
Posted Apr 6, 2003
Normally I would do a detailed journal entry the day after a meet-up, but I might as well just wait for DD to post the log somewhere.
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Latest reply: Apr 6, 2003
Time thieves.
Posted Mar 30, 2003
Stick your British Summer Time, I want my hour back!
Discuss this Journal entry [36]
Latest reply: Mar 30, 2003
The only thing on TV that isn't the news...
Posted Mar 21, 2003
They're selling 
on QVC. Cake! By mail order! What are they trying to do to me? 
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Latest reply: Mar 21, 2003
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Dr E Vibenstein (You know it is, it really is.)
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