BOFH: Peeling back the layers of the magic banana industrial complex BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "I got an interesting email this morning," the Boss says, lurching over to the cafeteria table where the PFY and I are seated. "Oh yes?" the PFY asks, encouraging him to share, for some inexplicable reason. "Yes! It was from an industry body that..." "Was it an industry body, though, …
At last, I understand what our new boss thought he was eating when he declared to his supremos: "I will double our turnover within two years and reduce costs at the same time." He never disclosed his plan to us doubters, nor it seems to his controllers who wisely asked how things were going after twelve months had passed. Pointing to the accounts ledger, they intimated that things were not going well....
Inexplicably, there followed a spot-check for drugs in the Executives Wash Room (we only had one executive).
He was getting inspiration from the 'fast-food' delivery man but it wasn't bananas.
Just like that, he was gone! Magic ----->
As someone whose career was closely tied to several ISO standards, this is so scarily true. My own response, when people hype up a particular standard, is to point out that (if it's from ISO) that it's the lowest everyone on the committee could agree on. Rather than being touted as the goal of greatness, it's actually the minimum that anyone should even contemplate as just about acceptable. And don't forget that one of the biggest problem with standards is that there's so many of them!
<rambling mode>
As an aside, "standard" is one of the words I use when showing how language changes. Early in the 20th century, there was a UK car manufacturer called "Standard", and they built some very good cars. "Standard" was a term used for a flag of honour - troops would follow their standard into battle (albeit not quite so literally by the 20th century). The Standard Car Company was one to follow as their name was a badge of excellence. In 1944, Standard bought out another car manufacturer called "Triumph". The name of the company "Standard-Triumph" eventually changed to just "Triumph" as it was seen to be more marketable. One reason was that "standard" had taken on the connotation of, well, just bog-standard - nothing special. "Standard" had evolved from excellence to barely acceptable.
</rambling mode>
Anyone else remember The Dickies punk rendition of The Banana Splits song?
Clearly a dysfunctional septic tank at that.
"Wastewater enters the first chamber of the tank, allowing solids to settle and scum to float."
In the part of the world where we were, the accepted remedy for pongy septic tank† was to fling a dead cat into it.
† where disambiguation from a left Pondian might then have also been required; not so much today.
