• C (unregistered) in reply to anon

    You work for IBM don't you? ;)

  • Walter E. Wallis (unregistered)

    Earlier this year, a fire in Sacramento destroyed a trestle and cut the UP main transcontinental rail line. Swartzneger waived the environmental rules, and the trestle was replaced in a couple of weeks. Later, a tanker truck crashed under a Bay Bridge ramp destroying it. Swartzneger waived normal bidding rules and approved a bonus plan and the ramp was back within a month. In the mean time, some repairs from the Loma Prieta earthquake are not finished yet.

  • them (unregistered) in reply to WTF_is_fake

    I call fake on your calling fake. Another made up disbelief!

  • reivi (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    You disgust me. Also, these practices disgust me. I can't believe stuff like this actually happens... It sounds more like Dilbert or another comic.
    You are lucky that Dilbert seems like fiction to you.
  • SpamBot (unregistered) in reply to Top Cod3r

    "The real WTF is T.C. It sounds like he is an expert at avoiding work, and dumped all his responsibilities on the people in the other groups. Then when they didn't do it fast enough he decided to deride them on Worse Than Failure as punishment. "

    well, I guess you have never had to deal with a public body before if you think that

  • Notes (unregistered) in reply to shakin
    shakin:
    Especially if a union is involved. My dad used to be a school music teacher and he had to request to the unionized janitorial staff to have music sheet lines drawn on his blackboard. After two weeks of it not being done my dad finally drew the lines himself and then got in trouble for doing the job of a unionized worker.

    I am a music teacher, in a public school, and I have never (not once) heard this story.

    There is a 100% chance that shakin is, intentionally or otherwise, spreading untrue, malevolent propaganda.

  • 10th (unregistered)

    I heard this story from TC on IM when it was ongoing, honestly wasnt that surprised, considering it taken me 2 seperate forms, and a phone to change a desktop resolution from 800x600 to 1024x768.

    To those of you who really wish this were fake, its not. I feel like I was a part of the entire process (IM updated along the way...)

  • Me Too! (unregistered)

    I say it's all management's fault. Oppressive processes, undue oversight of said processes, and giving workers "the responsibility but not the authority" are signs of bad management. Management's job should be to facilitate everyone's job, not cover their own fear of failure and incompetence.

    I went from a govt agency with a totally disfunctional IT management to a govt agency that actually works. Recently we got a new manager coming from that same disfunctional IT dept; and he didn't leave the attitude behind. He actually said "I'm surprised you (all) work together." And it's clear he does not trust us. The tone is always as if we're stupid, lying, and/or cheating. And believe it or not, he was not known as one of the crappy managers where he came from.

    I know what's in store for us here. Rabid attention to paperwork trivialities, more process, lack of initiative on our part (who wants to get chewed out for little mistakes?), and steadily declining morale.

    TRUE STORY At that "other" dept. we formed "architecture groups" (don't ask, I don't know) to fill in details of, for example, coding standards! Anyway in the group I was assigned to (all groups were lead by one of our IT managers)we spend the first several meetings just defining terms. I kid you not. Two or three words/terms per week. We were really making progress! After that we seemed to just quit meeting - management lost interest I guess.

    You can't make this stuff up, folks!

  • Jaan Doh (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward

    Dilbert IS about a government office. However, said office is much worse than Dilbert leads us to believe.

  • Pecos Bill (unregistered) in reply to seejay
    seejay:
    I work for a financial institution that makes billions of $ a year. And we get all sorts of red tape like this.

    Two years, paperwork out the wazoo, stalling, and an agreement to pay $50K, and we still haven't been able to get a server moved from our office to the datacentre.

    6 months would have been a bloody dream.

    -- Seejay

    DING! DING! DING! We have a winner! Biggest red tape WTF for a move ever. $50K? Even for a massive mainframe from the 70s, $50K?????? For a move?

    captcha: dubya. How appropriate. Wretched President and red-tape nightmare.

  • petr (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward

    Dilbert is true, I lived through 75% of the situations. This happens! You just don't have much corporate experience, do you?

  • eric bloedow (unregistered) in reply to eric76

    reminds me of a story: someone need some work done (i forget the details)...he sent then e-mail after e-mail, asking them when they were going to get started, finally after several months they replied, "you haven't sent us the important information we need." so then he sent them an archived copy of the FIRST e-mail he had ever sent them, which contained ALL the information they said they needed, and an archived copy of the SECOND e-mail he had ever sent them, which ALSO contained all the information they said they had never received...and an archived copy of the THIRD e-mail he had ever sent them, which ALSO contained all the information they said they had never received...

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