Author: DOuG pRATt

Ted Talk – 4

Although Ted was the only person I ever fired, there were a couple other guys, both White, who came close. One of them transferred to a non-traveling group after I told him he had to stop submitting his bar tabs as dinner receipts on his expense reports.

Years later, when I was reporting to a different boss, the other guy was an existing employee who had been foisted on me after he hadn’t worked out in another group. He would return from lunch bleary-eyed and smelling of booze. Fortunately for me, he quit on the day I was going to reprimand him for his poor job performance.

Ted had made it through the requisite probationary period, and his first solo business trip went well, according to the customer. He seemed to be a good fit for my installation group, but it didn’t take too much longer for the trouble to begin.

Life on the road required crazy hours, including occasional weekend travel, and doing whatever needed to be done, whenever it had to be done. So back at the office there was some flexibility with the schedule, but everybody needed to be in by 10. The weeks when Ted wasn’t traveling, he started coming in late on Fridays.

The office was in Cambridge, and Ted lived in Cambridge with a roommate. He took the subway to work, so he didn’t have a long or difficult commute.

After a couple of times when Ted didn’t show up until well after 10, I asked him what was going on. He was doing his DJ side gig on Thursday nights. I said something like, “That’s cool. Enjoy it, but don’t let it interfere with your job, okay Ted?” My little internal warning bell started ringing again.

Ted wasn’t the only company employee with a side job or avocation. One had a weekend food concession stand on Boston Common. Another worked with the fireworks company that put on the big 4th of July shows with the Boston Pops. Before retiring, when I was, to my regret, a boss once again, I suspected a telecommuter was taking extra long lunches to be an Uber driver. Thirty years earlier, before cell phones, it wasn’t easy locating Ted when he was a no-show.

Ted was a sharp dressed young man, but when he made his late appearances on Fridays he looked like he’d had a late night, and not much got done the rest of the day. Repeated verbal warnings didn’t help. I couldn’t tell Ted he had to quit doing whatever he was doing Thursday nights. All I could do was remind him to be in by 10 on Fridays, and that I was becoming concerned about his job performance.

The guy who drank his dinner was put on notice because he passed out while dining with a customer. A woman in my group, who was a co-worker at the time, caused a huge problem when she was with a customer, and made what was perceived to be a pass at another woman. That event resulted in a contract change allowing customers to reject any company representative from further in-person visits for any reason.

I began to worry how Ted was handling himself when he was away on business. Consulting with my boss, we decided to risk waiting to see if a customer complained or even invoked the contract clause. Would they be reluctant to do that because Ted was Black? For that matter, was Ted being Black a consideration for me, as his supervisor, to cut him some extra slack?

Bluetooth 1, AI 0

Recently, on my Feedly RSS newsfeed reader, I listened to this BBC podcast about how Bluetooth got its name.

Feedly has jumped on the AI tech train. Here’s what their AI thought about the podcast.

I clicked “NO” to correct Feedly’s AI, which had a 56% level of confidence that Bluetooth involves sports.

A Tale of Suspension

Tomorrow, my 2011 Honda CR-V will be at a dealership for an outstanding recall that was announced a year ago. I was told the job will take most of the day.

03/30/2023

SUMMARY:
American Honda Motor Co., Inc. (Honda) is recalling certain 2007-2011 model year CR-V vehicles. In salt-belt states where de-icing agents are used to maintain the roadway, the de-icing agents, along with mud and water, could enter the rear frame through drainage/positioning holes when the vehicle is driven through flooded areas or puddles at high speeds. Over time, the accumulated de-icing agents/mud/water mixture could cause corrosion to the frame’s internal structure. If this occurs, the rear trailing arm can fall off.

SAFETY RISK:
The corrosion to the frame’s internal structure can cause the rear trailing arm to fall off, increasing the risk of a crash or injury.


Registered owners of affected vehicles will be notified by mail and asked to take their vehicle to an authorized Honda dealer. Dealers will inspect the rear frame for corrosion to determine the remedy. Owners who have paid to have these repairs completed at their own expense may be eligible for reimbursement, in accord with the recall reimbursement plan on file with NHTSA. For additional questions, owners may contact American Honda’s Customer Support & Campaign Center at 1-888-234-2138.

Not long before the recall was announced, the rear trailing arm broke on this college student’s 2008 CR-V. Not knowing the recall was forthcoming, and somehow having access to a fully equipped garage, the very capable mechanic and Taylor Swift fan did the repair himself!

My CR-V is three years newer, and its 79,000 miles (about 6,000/year) are 200,000 fewer than that guy has on his car. So it’s in much better condition, and I don’t know what the extent of the “remedy” will be, but thanks to that video I now see why the garage wants it for most of the day.

Here is the enterprising young man after the recall was announced. The proof he did the work is on YouTube, and I hope he will be reimbursed.

Follow-up: Well, that turned out to be not a surprise at all. The recall resulted in nothing more than an inspection, and the car passed. It was actually a fishing expedition, and of course the dealership found several thousand dollars worth of problems that “must” be fixed. Having been screwed over sixteen years ago by the same dealer, after the air conditioner “Black Death” in my long-gone 2002 CR-V, I’m not inclined to give them money unless absolutely necessary.

2002 Honda CRV A/C Black Death

The owner of the excellent and trusted local garage I have relied upon for 25+ years has the print-out of “urgent” repairs. He’ll decide what really does need to be done, and I’ll drop the car off next week for him to do the work.

Ted Talk – 3

When new hires seemed ready, they would go on a site visit with either myself or an experienced member of the group. The idea was the new person would participate in the technical work of a live field installation, and then conduct the training sessions with assistance from the experienced staffer.

The closer the customer was to the office the better, to keep travel expenses for two as low as possible. There were quite a few local customers back then, and those were ideal.

I preferred to trust an experienced member of the group, rather than going myself. It encouraged teamwork, while giving staffers who showed potential an opportunity to take a supervisory role.

The timeframe I’m talking about, by the way, was 1987, at the peak of the minicomputer era. In those days, an installation typically took an entire workweek, including travel. Leaving on a Monday and returning that Friday was the norm, with the more distant destinations requiring Sunday departures. Toronto? Leave Boston on a Monday morning. Seattle? Leave Sunday.

My group was always first in the installation schedule to go onsite at a customer. After the training visit a new staffer would fly solo and work alone. We were a System group, and we very rarely traveled with someone from an Application group in the company. This is an important point in Ted’s story, as will be explained later.

The upshot was that Ted did all right on his training visit. He managed the software installation and testing with minimal supervision, and he was a natural at conducting the training sessions. My boss and I were pleased with our new hire, and I forgot about my “little warning bell.”

The Posturing Gadfly

I watched another one of the Firing Line videos, made available on YouTube by the Hoover Institution Library. Only one month before Nixon resigned the presidency, William F. Buckley, Jr. sat with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who were promoting their book, All the President’s Men.

In hindsight, Buckley strikes me as a rather unimpressive pundit and debater. As I saw in the way he handled John Kenneth Galbraith, Buckley would bring up irrelevant and arcane ‘whataboutisms,” or he’d change the subject outright, or he’d resort to small personal digs. With Woodward and Bernstein he fell flat and clearly had trouble when attempting to articulate some inchoate thoughts.

In my post about the American Masters profile of Buckley, I said the only domestic major issue of his time that he got right was Watergate. Now I see that Buckley actually gave Nixon the benefit of the doubt right up to the end. All he really did was accept the inevitability of Nixon falling on his sword.

Woodward and Bernstein were very impressive on Firing Line. While remaining respectful of William F. Buckley, Jr., they held an unwavering advantage over him from the start. They masterfully handled Buckley’s various attempts at redirecting the interview onto irrelevant tangents. Buckley even brought up that favorite right-wing wet dream of Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia, of the necessity to torture someone who has threatened to blow up a city with a nuclear weapon. Bernstein quickly and directly put the conversation back on track, while Woodward strategically played up to Buckley with some cleverly tailored flattery. Their way of working together can be seen in the famous movie adaptation with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford.

To Buckley’s credit, once he finally realized he was outmatched he mostly listened to Woodward and Bernstein. Perhaps it was because of the timeliness of the subject, or maybe Buckley allowed himself to consider the pair his journalist peers, at least for the moment. It’s revealed they turned down Buckley’s first request for a visit, and they almost rejected his second request.

We’re approaching the 50th anniversary of Tricky Dick going down the drain by flying away in a helicopter. Anyone who wants to be reminded of just how good Woodward and Bernstein were at their jobs, or for anyone who doubts their significance in what happened fifty years ago, this is a must-see hour.

As before, I am linking rather than embedding, because of the disclaimers at the start of the video. Clicking the picture will take you there. If the Hoover Institution were serious about their copyright claim, they would not allow their videos to be embedded.