The first I heard of EMALS was in February, when a customer requested a list of over one hundred fasteners, all with high quantities, mostly military standards. The buyer gave us a rough explanation, which sounded to me an awful lot like a mass driver for jet fighters. I heard back from them recently and they bought a few more bolts and nuts to ( Read more... )

I just overheard someone talking about a customer initiating a complaint by “sending me an emo.” My first thought was Man, was the customer that whiny? “You’ve undershipped me, our production line will surely go down, my father never loved me, and now I won’t even have my manager’s substitute approval, I’ve got no reason to go on living.”It was ( Read more... )

This morning, during a discussion of pleasant workplaces, I described a customer as “a snowflake - the good kind.”
“Is there a bad kind of snowflake?” asked a co-worker.
Realizing that not everyone in the world uses LiveJournal, and just might not know the word speshul, gave an example: “Valerie.* Valerie is the bad kind of snowflake.”
“Valerie is ( Read more... )

My boss, fresh from a management class, is considering how to implement concepts established by FarmVille as incentive structures. This seems to be very trendy right now, as employers cast around for alternate management techniques more appropriate to contemporary decentralized businesses. ( Alvin Toffler says it's about time. )

While reviewing business strategies, a co-worker turned up this gem from San Francisco State University's Executive MBA Program. Selected highlights:
"The postsecondary knowledge industry relies on a heterogeneous set of organizational change strategies."
Graduate study requires you to be flexible.
"... the present is simply history in close ( Read more... )

Shasta®'s "Mountain Rush®" is terrible. It tastes like carbonated lime candy. Seriously, like melted Life Savers® mixed in with club soda.

There are days when I wonder how Shasta® stays in business.

I’ve been saving up tidbits to enter for over a week now, but it seems dumb to post them at this point. However, this happened today at work and I had to put it up ( Read more... )

The malapropism of the day:

"It's nice to have an extra pair of fingers around the office."

No doubt inspired by reading her Valentine’s Day cards from classmates, Avery was speaking to herself (“I was talking for me, Daddy, not for you”) in meter yesterday as I drove her home. Bear in mind that she won’t be four until May when you read ( a selection from her corpus: )

Customer Q signs a contract agreeing to buy 400,000 of part X over the next twelve months ( Read more... )