Phil Cook wrote:
> And lo on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:18:56 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did 
> spake, saying:
> 
>> "My *God* - you have a log book for *every* PC on your network?? What 
>> on earth is the *point* of that?!?"
>>
>> I manage to avoid exclaiming "...and you *don't*?"
> 
> I trust your answer was more along the lines of "We keep them as part of 
> the audit trail that is legally required for our industry, both here and 
> in the USA" and watched him turn a whiter shade of pale.

Actually, he'd probably just not believe me. :-P

The guys at HQ tend to not believe anything anyone in the UK says.

For example, a while back we had a period where the lab was utterly 
empty. Bored analysts were dusting shelves and rearranging paperwork 
(and leaving work *hours* early) because there was simply no useful work 
to be done. There were even rumours that the site might close, it was so 
damn quiet.

And then the Big Bosses came over, and we had a meeting. So they're 
standing there telling us how we all need to pull our weight and work 
hard and work unpaid overtime if necessary (!!) to complete work on time 
and someone piped up "why? We haven't got any work to do right now."

"Oh, I don't believe that."

"No, seriously. We've got no work."

"Well, you might not have much, but you must have *something*. Anyway, 
what we-"

"No, we've got NO WORK."

"Well I don't believe that for a second."

Only when our exasperated lab director *dragged* these guys over to the 
lab and physically *showed* them the empty freezers did they all gasp 
and go "holy crap! We gotta get some samples in here right away! We're 
losing a fortune here... Jeez, why didn't you guys *tell* us you had no 
work?!" (Obviously, the answer being "We *have* been telling you about 
this - for many *months* before the gap in the schedule actually hit the 
lab. Why didn't you LISTEN to us?")

Within days we had more work than we could handle coming through the 
door, but you have to wonder why this didn't happen months ago when our 
lab director is phoning these bozos *daily* to tell them we've got no 
work. I imagine because they though "no work" was an exaggeration...

> Knowing what you do I'm not surprised that you need such a trail; 
> disconcerting at the least that your IT head doesn't know that.

Er, YES. o_o

>> "Wow, that's *insane*! You can't do that...! OK, I'm gonna have to get 
>> that fixed."
> 
> Hehe that's easy just hire a good lobbying company and get the 
> regulations changed for the whole industry - piece of cake it'll all be 
> done in a couple of years.

These are the kind of idiots who seem to think that major national 
governments will just change their laws to suit the company. Obviously, 
they are sadly mistaken. (What *is* it that gives people these ideas 
that the world revolves around them??)

> I do like "You can't do that" always funny 
> when used in a situation where not only have you done that, but have 
> done that for quite some time now.

Yeah, isn't it great? :-D

>> Clearly, at HQ they do things a little bit differently. ;-) I always 
>> thought it was an exaggeration, but now I'm not so sure...
> 
> What are they doing over there?

Well, from what I can tell, they spout a lot of grand talk about 
compliance with regulations, and then just do whatever they feel like 
whenever following the rules isn't convinient.

For example, a lot of their "procedure documents" basically say, in 
flowery language, "the person performing this task will decide on the 
best way to do it based on their expertise". Or perhaps "there will be a 
procedure. The people doing it will know what it is. It may change from 
time to time. We won't actually write it down anywhere though."

The entire *point* of a procedure document is to rigidly define 
*exactly* what the procedure is. So that you can be tested against it. 
Also, official procedure documents go through an extensive review and 
approval process, to ensure that the procedure is acceptable. Also, 
these documents get archived, so that when you reconstruct a project, 
you can determine exactly which version of the procedure the people 
would have been working to at the time.

All of this goes straight out the window when you have cursory "there 
will be a procedure" documents. I seriously wonder how they get away 
with it - our QA department in the UK would *never* allow such a thing. 
(In fact, they regularly refuse to adapt "global" procedure documents 
because they don't specify any procedure - or they specify a dumb 
procedure!)

>> OMG, I should stop reading lolcat!
> 
> Yes, yes I think you should.

pleez to stop poking me now?

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