I want a "disable AI option" ...
BOFH: Are you ready to raise our expense account limits now?
BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns The PFY and I are getting some training on the long-awaited new purchasing system and its much-vaunted AI matching module that, with a lot of training, will be able to automate the payment of invoices and free up our time. Or, in other words, prevent us from making sketchy or unapproved …
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Sunday 29th March 2026 00:20 GMT the Jim bloke
It is the most widespread example of Affirmative Action anywhere everywhere? in the world, Technology users are being required to provide employment - or even give up their own jobs for - completely retarded, incompetent, non functional slop generators.
AI is already disabled.
But we are forced to have it anyway.
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Friday 27th March 2026 14:21 GMT blu3b3rry
Re: Tip yourself - on a Friday
Sometimes subtle enforced bribery is the best route, especially when it's Other People's Money.
Of course the office window or basement stormwater sump is always available as a backup. All are effective methods when dealing with an infestation of Salesweasels.
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Monday 30th March 2026 09:25 GMT doublelayer
Re: Tip yourself - on a Friday
They don't want incrimination except as a backup, since if this guy goes down, it would be because his actions were detected and that would mean their extra access would be reset. No, the little bribe is useful both to make sure he won't tell anyone and that, if they need anything else, he will have more of a reason to provide it so they won't have to go through the whole blackmail thing.
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Friday 27th March 2026 13:07 GMT GlenP
Sounds like our purchasing/expenses system, except the bean counters have kept it firmly under their control.
It has the worst UI I've ever seen and is full of totally illogical settings, e.g. if I'm purchasing for the UK it defaults to Invoicing Poland, however if I use my Polish login it defaults to delivering and invoicing the UK. Once a "request" is converted to an "order" you can't make any changes, at all, you have to cancel it and start again and at one point I was getting repeated warnings about exceeding the budget for the stationery account, my spend on that account was £30, everyone else was £100s if not £1,000s - they had to turn the warnings off in the end.
Finance wanted me to interface it to our ERP system so all POs and invoices were processed in the cloud but I pointed out that the POs are time consuming to add (OK for a few items, a right pain if someone is ordering multiple times a day) and wouldn't provide the data needed for production material so I refused.
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Friday 27th March 2026 13:23 GMT Antron Argaiv
Worked as a product development angineer for a smallish company -- we regularly made one or more parts orders every day while building prototypes. Company gets bought by multinational megacorp. Shock! Horror! You can't do that! We are introduced to the new Purchase Request System. One must humbly request the purchase of parts, using the appropriate form, and explaining what the parts will be used for (along with the usual account and project numbers). That Purchase Request must then be approved by Higher Authority (did I mention said Authority is a beancounter in a faraway country?)
Yeah, that worked about as well as you might imagine. When I retired, they still hadn't worked it out. Said megacorp was a mostly software business, and consequently, engineers didn't buy much...the odd memory stick or HDD, but the idea of EEs and MEs ordering parts to build or test prototypes...daily...on their own authority (gasp!), was an unacceptable deviation from the norm. Needless to say, the impact on our development schedules of all this required process was unfortunate. Our management was powerless to change things, their management was told to "make it work" or something, and we would periodically get emails from someone in another country asking us what this part was for. When we replied that we had entered all that information on the purchase request, the person replied (and I am not making this up), "oh! I don't have access to that field".
Retirement is wonderful, thanks!
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Friday 27th March 2026 14:03 GMT blu3b3rry
I rather "fondly" recall a stock controller like that who went on quite the power trip whenever their colleague who usually dealt with spare parts supply was off work.
Any internal stock request for spare parts to fix our kit was consistently questioned, often with requests for information far beyond their knowledge or anything involving them at all.
It would always start with a email response of "what do you need that for?"
Me - "I need it to fix X"
Stock controller - "Why does X need to be repaired?"
Deep breaths.
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Friday 27th March 2026 15:11 GMT MachDiamond
"One must humbly request the purchase of parts, using the appropriate form, and explaining what the parts will be used for (along with the usual account and project numbers). That Purchase Request must then be approved by Higher Authority (did I mention said Authority is a beancounter in a faraway country?)"
I didn't get the pleasure of the beancounters being in a different country. The opposite coast of the US was the span. Better get an approval before 1pm or there's no ordering until the next day. I proposed a couple of workflows to make the company a bit more responsive, but my degrees are in engineering, so what would I know about accounting? Never mind that I had owned a manufacturing company for years previous to that job.
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Tuesday 7th April 2026 10:15 GMT Bebu sa Ware
A Long Time Ago, In a Differency Lunacy
a similar problem but different root causes had a ingenious but likely highly illegal solution.
At the time most of the components, tools and instruments used by the tech team were supplied by a specialist wholesaler that was conveniently located near by, so that faxing or phoning an order would have the component delivered within the hour rather than the weeks the procurement process required.
The cunning ruse was early on in the financial year was to order, take delivery and acquit an expensive fictitious item (with a SKU mind.)
With the money in their hands the wholesaler was happy to run a direct account with the team funded by this deceit.
Any residual funds were carried over into the following year by the wholesaler which I understood was the original reason for this arrangement - unspent annual budgets weren't carried over.
I assume the fictitious item was returned for a (partial) refund offset by the legitimate purchases that eventually progressed throught procurement long after physical delivery — just in case of an audit. Although the fictious item might be a consumable like a canister of smoke for refilling electronic components like electrolytic capacitors which are notoriously prone to smoke leakage. I guess you even get demurrage on the unreturned empty canisters through accounts.
With the advent of corporated credit cards spread like confetti, decentralised B2B purchasing and a general lack of oversight the organisation's finances collapsed into a complete shambles (from which it hasn't recovered) but with bonus the need for this benign fraud disappeared.
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Saturday 28th March 2026 06:00 GMT PRR
Re: #1974Cortina$$
> "...rebranded quicker than stolen horses."
I'm stealing that one. But out here in the sticks, the power company and the telephone company have been re-branding faster than IT companies.
> Using a coveted old car ....I may have some accompanying complementary domain names,...
I had the domain "YellowCougar.com" for a while. Variant are now very common.
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