Work Stupidity (No. 527 in a series. Collect ‘em all)
Comments: 5
I’m still too furious to adequately describe a certain episode of classic work stupidity that occured last week. It’s already having amusing repercussions, however, so I need to give you some background.
A brilliant young woman with whom I’ve worked in the past recently returned to Tokyo after some time overseas and was looking for a job. I tried to hire her and last week got her into the office to meet the president. Time was a critical factor since she had been offered another job at an advertising agency. Nonetheless, the choice was obvious; we’re losing two designers so let’s replace at least one, and who better than this particular candidate?
After three hours of interviews she left the building with an offer of a job. The offered salary was too low (of course) but after speaking to her the next morning, I recommended she simply call the president, speak frankly, and continue negotiations. I was sure an agreement would not be long in coming and, besides, she was willing to work for us for considerably less than the other place was offering. After talking with her, I left home to go into the office and upon my arrival the president mentioned to me that he had spoken with her a few moments ago.
He said that after giving it some more thought overnight he had come to the conclusion that we did not need anyone in her capacity right now.
I’m not sure if there’s a word for the way I felt when he told me this but if there is, it’s probably something we borrowed from the German. It would have to be a very long, difficult to pronounce word, capitalised of course, and causing lots of spit to fly upon its utterance. It would be a high-megatonnage word that sat stony and silent like a nuclear missile in the deepest silo of our vocabulary and, likewise, it would not be a word you would ever want to have to use.
I stepped outside the office to call the woman in private and apologised profusely for wasting her time. Luckily I had reasons to be out of the office for the rest of the day.
And so today. An hour and a half after arriving at the office I’m called into a meeting to discuss how we’re going to make it through the rest of the week. There’s too much work! It’s crunch time!
Get it!? The panic-driven strategy is to hold off hiring any replacements in the creative department until there’s enough new business in the door to “justify” the expense. Do the math; having fewer people in the department means less capacity precisely at a time when we are trying to put ourselves in a higher-capacity situation.
I have a feeling the future will be just full of surprises.
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Posted to General Rants • 2002.03.26 (Tue) • 23:31
Comments
Posted by milov 2002.03.15, 19:31
Blimps are cool; one passed our way last July… http://milov.nl/photos/blimp.jpg (unfortunately my camera doesn’t have a zoom-option :).
Posted by marc brown 2002.03.21, 11:27
A blimp at sunset in L.A.
We get blimps all the time, this was the Goodyear Blimp, which is the coolest cause it has lights all along the side which display various messages, I didn’t have a zoom, but you get the picture.
Posted by marc brown 2002.03.21, 11:28
get the picture here actually: http://www.jetpack.com/marcbrown/blogimg/blimpsunset.jpg
goodyear blimp is here http://www.goodyearblimp.com
Posted by griff 2002.04.01, 08:40
hey, we must work at the same place!
Posted by jh 2002.04.02, 16:13
I just can’t understand it. Surely at some point self-preservation instincts must kick in and you start making slightly more rational decisions…?
Yet to see any evidence of this, however.
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