I am either really smart or really stupid, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out which. I’ve always felt it was smart to adhere to the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) approach to life yet there are apparently people who are hell bent to make my life otherwise. I’ve never understood why people have to make things so complicated yet increasingly in every facet of our life these folks are behind the scenes making things harder than they really have to be. It’s enough to make an old cynic like myself lose what little faith he had in humanity in the first place. The workplace holds many prime examples of what I am talking about. For instance for years when I received a purchase order by e-mail or fax it was simple and held the following basic information…”Here is what I want, when I need it, and and here is the purchase order number I would like it to reflect.” Easy peasy. Straight and to the point, and all the information I needed to fill the order. At some point out there some propeller head decided that wasn’t good enough. Now when I get a purchase order by e-mail or fax it is followed by a novel full of terms and conditions that rivals “War and Peace”. I kid you not. I have several large customers that send one line item purchase orders for less than a dollar that are anywhere from nine to thirteen pages of convoluted lawyer speak. I can only imagine the thoughts running through that barrister’s head that day…”I need to do something to make myself look good around here, because if I don’t quit sitting around with my thumb up my butt, they are going to notice and eventually get rid of me.” And with that the thirteen page purchase order full of terms and conditions was born. Then all the other barristers in all the other companies said, “We’d better do that too!” We don’t want these companies to think we’re slacking!”, and it spread like wildfire. BTW, did you ever notice how the words “barrister” and “barista” are so similar? Coincidence? I think not. Every workplace has them. These are the employees that you could pay with oyster shells as long as you stuck some sort of title by their name. To hell with feeding their families, these people just want the power. This individual is usually someone who doesn’t have the brains God gave a mentally challenged goat, and has usually ass kissed his way to the top. I call these people “M.O.M.M.”, which is short for “Masters of Mental Masturbation”. These egomaniacs live to pat themselves on the back and are often another source of disdain in my simplistic world. These blatherskites could screw up a shot put in their quest for self gratification. What should be a simple task suddenly becomes a labyrinthine hell all in the name of their mentally masturbatory actions. These are same people that came up with such brilliant ideas as “new” math, and “Windows 8″. There is going to be a special corner in Hades reserved for these idiots, and I plan to stay as far away from it as possible. If you ever make it to Heaven, look me up. I’ll be in the place labelled “Simple Section”. I believe computer software designers are going to be in this little hot corner too with Bill Gates as their head demon. How about this for a plot for a James Bond movie?: An evil madman wants to take over and rule the world by inventing a computer and filling it with software that forces everyone on the planet to think like they do to operate it. He and his software engineer henchmen will get the entire planet dependent on this apparatus for their information, financial, and entertainment needs. Once the world is addicted, the evil software henchmen distribute a portable version of their hypno-apparatus then use it to keep track of the populous and control their habits. Everywhere you looked, restaurants, streets, the workplace, church, homes…people would have their heads down, transfixed on their portable hypno-apparatus as 007 tried to save the day.. Yeah. You’re right. That probably is a little too far fetched even for a Bond movie. My company just spent what I am guessing to be close to a million dollars on a new software program. Our old one was simple and just how I liked it, fast … do your thing and move on to sell the next guy. Now I spend my day dealing with inventory corrections, double shipments, billing corrections,and a myriad of other headaches all while waiting on the damned thing to think. This was once time spent concentrated on selling, but apparently some programmers in California had other ideas. Every time I have to jump through hoops in this thing I get a mental picture of these stoners all sitting at a round table in a vineyard somewhere in the NAPA Valley, sitting in a circle, passing a hallucinogen and saying, “Yeah man! Let’s put that in there! That’ll blow their minds!” *puff* Mission accomplished. They’ve shown the world how smart they are by taking a two step process and making it into a ten step process. That is not my idea of progress, but then again what do I know? Short, sweet, simple, and effective has always been the way I have found it should be done in all things we endeavor except for pleasing a woman. Short and simple has no place in that arena, but sweet and effective will get a man a long way in this life. Especially the effective part, but that is the only thing I can think of in which my motto hasn’t worked. It seems that somehow, somewhere in the recent past I missed the connection and stayed back on the short bus, foolishly believing that the fastest way between two points was a straight line and things didn’t have to be so convoluted to be done correctly. Mental masturbation now rules the world and affects our workplace, our politics. and our lives at every crossroads and I for one am left off in my corner wondering who the smart ones really are.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 20:55:02 +0000
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