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Note: I don't think that this gives away any Super Sekrit Information, because everyone knows we use CTX machines - I mean, they're huge and grey-tan and have 'CTX' in great big red letters on the side and are sitting right out there where you can see them in our airport. But you'll notice I went through and replaced anything that might tell you what sorts of things we look at with [something inoccuous], to save you all from knowing what sorts of inoccuous-looking things you might want to disguise your next explosive device as.
We have this manager, Mr. RK, who I think I am about to proclaim to be not only a grade A ass, but an idiot as well. Attend well, and consider.
We have CTX machines (big cat scanner/x-rays) with which we look at baggage.
We have printers which print out the images of the bags which the machine has an Issue with, showing the exact thing which the machine doesn't like so that we can go find it and determine that it is, in fact, exactly what it appears to be - [something inoccuous].
We have a few people on morning shift who occasionally grab a bag which has Issues before it's Issues can be Resolved and toss the bag along onto the belt to get loaded on the plane. This is known as Losing a Bad Bag, and is a very bad thing, because it often results in having to unload the plane and rescan a lot of the bags on it until the bag in question is found.
We have the manager, RK, who thinks micromanaging is The Answer (when of course we know it's 42).
He had a document written up which was circulated on Monday, detailing exactly what the CTX operator is supposed to be doing, but leaving out the one thing which we have previously been told - Keep Your Eyes On The Screens At All Times. Apparently while we're fulfilling that overriding function of keeping our eyes on the screens at all times, for which we are not supposed to leave the chair, we also are required to be putting stickers on printouts and stapling printouts together and matching printouts with bags. (I picture the person who can actually do this looking something like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lucylou's drawing of herself doing animation editing, although we may have to add eyes on the backs of our heads.) Now, usually these duties are shared by the CTX operator and the unloader, depending on who's the most busy at any one moment, and as long as you have good communication with your unloader, and trust them, you're all set. Morning shift apparently doesn't communicate well, or they haven't had enough sleep, or they're just too busy, we can't really tell where the problem lies, but we very rarely have this problem on PM shift. (It escapes me why the AM shift and the management seem determined to think of PM as the lazy, rotten kids in the back of the class given that we have a much better work record than they do, but there you go. I strongly suspect that both the bad image and the good work record are related to the fact that we make an effort to at least pretend we get along.)
Needless to say, we gave 'feedback' (read 'bitching') on this directive. Eff-Eye-El, being the sort of person he is, took that feedback back to Mr. RK. In response he was told that if we didn't follow this new procedure he would take the printers away from us and then we'd have to do a full open bag search on every bad bag.
Now, having attended carefully, I ask you to Consider. Eff-Eye-El's response to Mr. RK was that if someone Lost a Bad Bag and we did that we would not have a printout showing us the relative shape of the bag which we were looking for we would have to dump the plane and do a full open bag search on every bag on that plane. Good argument.
However, let us take it one more step. I contend that if we took away the printers we'd never have to dump a plane again. If we had no printout, how would we ever know that a bag had been bad? If anyone notices a printout that's not been all duly captioned and notated we all have coronaries until the offender is tracked down, firmly shaken, and made to write us a little story on what this picture was all about, because if we can't find the person who actually did that bag we have dump the plane and look for it. (That's why the printer is in the center of the work area, where we're all around it at all times. Nobody we don't know gets anywhere NEAR one of our precious printouts.)
I say let him take the printers away, and we'll just sit downstairs and have far less work to do. Let all those hazardous [something inoccuous] go right on the plane. And the next few hundred people who die we'll just have to shrug and look at Mr. RK and say, "gosh, I can't imagine why the system didn't work." (Of course if I think something really looks like a problem I don't even let it out of the machine until I have a Supervisor come confirm the decision, but I'm not discounting the possibility that people who make nasty devices are getting better all the time at making them appear to be [something inoccuous].)
It all serves merely to confirm my long-held conviction that managers who have no clue what the worker on the line does should not be allowed to interfere with the day to day doing of the job. They have their place and they should be confined to it. Of course Mr. RK is incompetent at the job he's supposed to be doing, as well, but that's a rant for another time.
We have this manager, Mr. RK, who I think I am about to proclaim to be not only a grade A ass, but an idiot as well. Attend well, and consider.
We have CTX machines (big cat scanner/x-rays) with which we look at baggage.
We have printers which print out the images of the bags which the machine has an Issue with, showing the exact thing which the machine doesn't like so that we can go find it and determine that it is, in fact, exactly what it appears to be - [something inoccuous].
We have a few people on morning shift who occasionally grab a bag which has Issues before it's Issues can be Resolved and toss the bag along onto the belt to get loaded on the plane. This is known as Losing a Bad Bag, and is a very bad thing, because it often results in having to unload the plane and rescan a lot of the bags on it until the bag in question is found.
We have the manager, RK, who thinks micromanaging is The Answer (when of course we know it's 42).
He had a document written up which was circulated on Monday, detailing exactly what the CTX operator is supposed to be doing, but leaving out the one thing which we have previously been told - Keep Your Eyes On The Screens At All Times. Apparently while we're fulfilling that overriding function of keeping our eyes on the screens at all times, for which we are not supposed to leave the chair, we also are required to be putting stickers on printouts and stapling printouts together and matching printouts with bags. (I picture the person who can actually do this looking something like
lucylou's drawing of herself doing animation editing, although we may have to add eyes on the backs of our heads.) Now, usually these duties are shared by the CTX operator and the unloader, depending on who's the most busy at any one moment, and as long as you have good communication with your unloader, and trust them, you're all set. Morning shift apparently doesn't communicate well, or they haven't had enough sleep, or they're just too busy, we can't really tell where the problem lies, but we very rarely have this problem on PM shift. (It escapes me why the AM shift and the management seem determined to think of PM as the lazy, rotten kids in the back of the class given that we have a much better work record than they do, but there you go. I strongly suspect that both the bad image and the good work record are related to the fact that we make an effort to at least pretend we get along.)Needless to say, we gave 'feedback' (read 'bitching') on this directive. Eff-Eye-El, being the sort of person he is, took that feedback back to Mr. RK. In response he was told that if we didn't follow this new procedure he would take the printers away from us and then we'd have to do a full open bag search on every bad bag.
Now, having attended carefully, I ask you to Consider. Eff-Eye-El's response to Mr. RK was that if someone Lost a Bad Bag and we did that we would not have a printout showing us the relative shape of the bag which we were looking for we would have to dump the plane and do a full open bag search on every bag on that plane. Good argument.
However, let us take it one more step. I contend that if we took away the printers we'd never have to dump a plane again. If we had no printout, how would we ever know that a bag had been bad? If anyone notices a printout that's not been all duly captioned and notated we all have coronaries until the offender is tracked down, firmly shaken, and made to write us a little story on what this picture was all about, because if we can't find the person who actually did that bag we have dump the plane and look for it. (That's why the printer is in the center of the work area, where we're all around it at all times. Nobody we don't know gets anywhere NEAR one of our precious printouts.)
I say let him take the printers away, and we'll just sit downstairs and have far less work to do. Let all those hazardous [something inoccuous] go right on the plane. And the next few hundred people who die we'll just have to shrug and look at Mr. RK and say, "gosh, I can't imagine why the system didn't work." (Of course if I think something really looks like a problem I don't even let it out of the machine until I have a Supervisor come confirm the decision, but I'm not discounting the possibility that people who make nasty devices are getting better all the time at making them appear to be [something inoccuous].)
It all serves merely to confirm my long-held conviction that managers who have no clue what the worker on the line does should not be allowed to interfere with the day to day doing of the job. They have their place and they should be confined to it. Of course Mr. RK is incompetent at the job he's supposed to be doing, as well, but that's a rant for another time.