Yeah.  Stupid me.  I was bored and took some contract work out of the house.

I’ve not only stepped back in time to pre-1995, a time when people might still try to run a smallish business without a network or real internet access.  But a place where blue collar people still have the moxie to ask about wage increases when every other shop in state has been decimated by layoffs and wage reductions and loss of benefits.  A place where people are completely buried under paper and can’t see their way out, a place where there is a rabid, irrational fear that networking any device will bring business-crippling viruses.  It’s a place where a critical mass of analytical personalities who cannot make decisions without a suffocating accumulation of data have been allowed to run amok in an anal way, terrorizing people who would rather move into the future without the baggage of rationalization.

Gah.

My role was supposed to a clerical-bookkeeper-type, but I’ve now been given the unenviable task of IT-goddess and change catalyst.  I am a veiled threat held against the throat of a couple of paralyzed staff members who’ve been frozen into complacency and must now be cajoled and tormented alternatingly into action.

All this for the incredibly paltry sum one might pay a low-level office grunt.  Without the benefits.

Party A keeps track of all the quotes and jobs in a big notebook, then copies all that information into a spreadsheet on her PC; she types up an internal RFQ and hands it off along with a folder and drawings to Party B.  Party C reenters all the same information into yet another PC, then creates an estimate based on the drawings.  He hands off to Party C, who then replicates all the information in his own PC in order to create a Quote Tracking-WIP Tracking report.

Should the quote be accepted, Party C gives the file to Party D.  D then recreates the drawings in the CAD system on his PC, generating a tooling list on another PC (the tool list is in a text file format that no one on the floor will part with, created in a DOS-based software on a decrepit system fit for use as a boat anchor).

It’s no f*cking wonder we can’t compete with the Chinese, I think to myself.  But this place is actually winning work because of growth in China; they have orders for equipment that will ship there.

And the big guy believes in me implicitly, has already made me his confidante, expects me to integrate a network, internet, upgrade the accounting system, revamp the enterprise processes, work this to new ISO standards developed in tandem with this new enterprise-wide system. 

You can imagine the staff – staring daggers behind my back.

God, I am such a patsy.

My spouse is angry that I’m doing this, chewing on me for allowing myself to be abused for chickenfeed, although unwilling to acknowledge his role in this.  He actually encouraged the operations manager, an acquaintance he used to work with and has known for decades, to call me for an interview for this “clerical-bookkeeper” contract job.  I think he thought I was sitting around the house eating bon-bons or was just plain jealous that I wasn’t working while he’s slaving his butt off 80 hours a week.  (Of course he’s blissfully unaware of the hundreds, possibly thousands of jobs I’ve applied for over the last 19 months…) I took the hint and accepted the role. 

I can’t win for losing around here, I swear.

I’m giving these guys one month of my time.  Then I’m going to come home and eat bon-bons.  I’m sure I can find someone who’ll want this at that time.  Or at least I can find them either a clerical person or an IT person or a new operations manager.  Maybe even one of each.

8:17:01 PM    comment []

As luck would have it, I've been working on a contract which requires me to be on a customer's site every day.

They have NO internet access, let alone a network.

GAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

I'll be writing in the evening as time permits, until I'm able to finish design and implementation of LAN and WAN connections at this facility.  That's part of the contract; it's strong incentive to get the work done, I might add.

Have pity on me as I work through this period of withdrawal.  I feel like I've fallen back in time to pre-1995.

7:04:24 AM    comment []