BOFH: On the contrary, we LOVE rebranding here at the IT dept "Now remember - there are no wrong answers in this exercise," Janice, the huggy-feely HR type says in a non-threatening manner. "What about SH*TBAG?" the PFY blurts. "Well that's more of an outburst than an answer," I point out gently. "Oh," the PFY responds. "My mistake." Getting caught up in exercises designed to " …
Our financial business had a department of worthy investigative people called 'Organisation and Methods' (O&M).
A new CEO, for unknown reasons, renamed the department 'Systems and Methods'.
The staff were delighted to answer their phones with "S&M Department?"
We never found out whether the CEO was bright enough to have worked out the initials, but we suspected not.
Oh dear, reminds me of the farcical time in a previous company where a department's self serving nutjob decided to rebrand the company's "admin" team as "Central Services", then assigning titles such as "central services executive". This resulted in two things:
1) The girls in the office having to explain to potential new employers, friends and so on that they considered the job title was really "admin assistant" and having to put this on their CVs to make it clear.
2) The IT support manager renamed his department "Essential Services". No electricity, network or computers? No administration... :)
Thanks to ITIL we now have a Continual Service Improvement team who have a lovely CSI logo on their business cards.
The Yanks seem to be pretty indifferent to any TV reference but the Brit's cringe at any mention of it. So on my morning conf call I always make a special point of asking what CSI found out this week ;)
the wonderful gov / dept of ed decided to standardised all the Colleges names to be the county / city where the college is followed by "Institute of Technology". Worked fine for some like Dublin (DIT), Wicklow (WIT) but not so nice for Tipperary, where they changed the name to "Institute of Technology, Tipperary". Some other counties also had to change, like Galway (GIT). Ah, fond memories of silly things.
Didn't you get the memo in regard to the three hour training course this afternoon that everyone from the company is required to attend and be signed off on
Risk assessments in regard to mounting an office chair
The safe procedural ethics to be used with office equipment
The safest layout of office desk equipment an example images to be wall mounted locally
How to load an office photocopier or printer without getting paper cuts
Team ethics and responsibilities
In a company I worked at until recently the IT department shared an office with the Health & Safety department.
For some reason when we collectively suggested that the office should be referred to as the "Safety, Health & Information Technology Office" the powers that be refused to sanction the printing of new identifying door stickers showing the new collective acronym for the office
-maniax-
Back in the olden dayes we had a gradually-increasing network of PDP11's, each with a three-letter node-name related to its location. Brighton was BRI, Salford was SAL, and Bradford was (daringly) BRA. Bristol couldn't be BRI (already taken), so it had to be BST. Under no circumstances, we were told, could it be called TIT.
reminds me of the delightfully classic Special High Intensity Training memo
I always found HR to be embarassingly incompetent, petty power players, and did whatever I could to ignore them, as does everyone else.
And then my company failed, and I found myself looking for a job.
Now, I no longer find them funny, I find them evil. Truly evil.
No matter the moral or ethical damage that their fundamental arrogance and ignorance cause, they (and their ilk) are choking organisations, slowly, to death, and damaging the lives of millions (directly and indirectly I.e. Family).
That *all* positions, from specialist through manager, are decided by people who studied Sociology or Psychology, on purely superficial terms, is so fundamentally wrong. Strangely enough, they rate NLP or other "pseudo" crap higher than real experience.
While people earlier may not have loved their line managers, at least there existed the possibility that he or she, would know something about what the job entails or requires.
That hope is simply gone.
IT techs have certs, Managers have an MBA, White Wine for the ladies, Pints for the blokes. The Directors get the hottest PAs, marathon running qualifies for all management positions.
A simple, stupid and most of all STATIC system. Authoritarian, conformist, conservative. Inbred.
In the middle ages, your position in society decided what clothes, in which colours, you and your entire family were *permitted* to wear. Woe betide any "oiks" who tried to even dress differently or wore too fancy jewellery! This is what is coming back.
I know of companies where hiring, position and promotion are based solely on perceptions of looks, status and "attitude", never on competence, experience or ability. One after another, these companies are failing, but the "Cool! Brah" attitude remains.
I would despair, but I would like to eat.
Does ANYONE believe that it actually does anything.
Wasn't HR ("Human Resources") called Personnel?
Shorter is better!!
Most of the time this is some silly bored buy that needs to justify his existence as a living breathing person.
Brings me back to another "rebranding". They changed "NMR" (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance") scans to "MRI" (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) simply to eliminate "Nuclear" which seems to give everyone hives or some such.
From many years ago, in a school science lab with very different risk rules to the present regimes, trying to ignite magnesium with a match was difficult, on the other hand, in a flash bulb moment, supplying electricity should have the desired effect. A quick rewire of the cattle prods and you've got a 2 in 1 solution.
When I worked in a uni, my boss didn't want us called IT any more, so we sat around trying to think of a new title for us. Various names were bandied about and I Suggested "Computer Users Network Technical Specialists"
My boss at the time loved the title and wanted it painted on the door immediately, but unfortunately a junior of mine (a rather attractive young lady) said 'No Roy, no way am I going into an office with him and saying "Hello we are a pair of C#NTS"
Strange - the meeting got broken up and we remained as the IT department
Reminds me of this re-branding story:
In the 90's Siemens decided to harmonise its organisational image. One of the policy edicts was to answer the phone in all their offices worldwide with the same greeting. "Hello, Siemens <office location>".
So, "Hallo, Siemens Dortmund" would be the receptionist's first utterance in Dortmund.
This worked well in most places. However the receptionists at the Staines office in the UK were reportedly rather embarrassed with their greeting.
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