I just received a call from the two main troubled teens in my home. First, they called me at work. As I would rather have them check in for permission than just do whatever the f*ck they want, I am trying to be pleased. The problem is that I can’t become involved in a horrid pointless debate about the merits of rules and natural consequences. I take the calls but remind them at another time that they should evaluate the reasons before dialing.
Second, the grounded child wants to go to school and weight lift. Although the father in me wants him to go and get some exercise and activity, he is grounded. I gave him permission to go, but wanted to know the details of his activity. My reasons were to have him state his intentions and then be accountable for them. He needs to know that he broke the trust and this is a direct consequence to having a lack of trust. The devil is in the details and I am going to be there as an active sentinel against his bad decisions.
Third, the child who obtained the contraband materials wanted to know what happened to the speakers on the computer. He said, “…not with your fancy words or anything like that. Plain English. What did you do to the speakers?”
I told him “I disabled them.” Was that plain enough? He wanted an account of what was disabled so he could activate them again. It had nothing to do with why, but rather only what he wanted.
The fact is that he plays music obnoxiously loud and after repeated occurrences of the issue, I had to take the speakers away. The reason I took the speakers away were two fold: Primarily, the music is obnoxious and loud; secondary, the speakers could be damaged by excessively loud music.

Psychologically –
He concluded that if he could use another speaker (someone else’s speaker) then he would not be running the risk of damage, hence it was fine. The whole issue of too loud and repeated obnoxious instances was never even considered.

When I asked him about it, he didn’t even come up with that as a possibility. I don’t know if he is truly obtuse or is intentionally ignoring that issue. In either case he doesn’t feel the consequences are just.
This is the child, which in a perfectly quiet and empty house, turns the TV up such that you can clearly hear it outside.

I can remember back to my childhood. When my mom was away, I turned up the stereo to levels she did not tolerate. I was never allowed to do that when she was around. When I had my own “boom box” I would take it outside, but still get yelled at for playing music too loud, as it would disturb the neighbors. She was right of course, and I conformed to her wishes. Our kids, turn up music at all hours of the night and growl and complain when told to turn it down. Then they either don’t turn it down enough or turn it back up a few minutes later.

I expect kids to toe-the-line and naturally cross it from time to time, but this rag-tag bunch takes great pains to always be over the line.

The loud one (Oooo, that’s a good name for him) then launched into a rant about how just solving the problem is something he gets yelled at for and is unacceptable. He then tells me how I lied about something. I think it was about telling him his solutions were unacceptable and then I go and do it. Technically speaking, if that were true, I would be a hypocrite not a liar. It is my recollection hat he was talking abut a time in which he did something to someone else’s stuff and was told that was unacceptable.

Psychologically –
He is placing himself on an equal footing with the parents (foster parents) and home owners of the house. Second, he failed to grasp the issue of his actions and my responses with my stuff.

POW – a metaphorical smack with a huge stick, right up side their heads.

On to Work –
I am at war with stupidity.
This job has so many things wrong with it.

A minor one is as follows:
I was told that the sentence, “Atmospheric material is expected to react via indirect photolysis and degrade, the estimated half-life for this reaction is 20.5 hours.” needed to indicate that the hours were daylight hours. This issue I have is that anyone who does not know what this sentence is talking about will not gain the insight needed by adding “Daylight” and those who do understand the sentence will think not need the added specification.
This may seem like a fairly minor thing, but it required more than an hour of my day to reach a conclusion, where I had to add “of sunlight.” In truth this one instance is minor, but it is an example of the theme of problems we have here. These assessments are not doctoral theses. The addition of “of sunlight” does not educate those readers who do not have the background, and it does not add anything to those readers who do.
Our group is doing work for the corporation and its business units (called divisions). The divisions directly request work from us in support of regulatory and product stewardship needs. Our group is managed by another structure all together. We are managed by corporate employees who do not have a stake in any of the business ventures of the company. Our managers do not depend upon corporate sales and production to get paid.
Yes indirectly that need sales and there is a benefit to being autonomous and separate from those factors, but if you loose sight of the reason you are separate, the self-importance factor conjurers up other reasons. Understand that this company places great esteem in the award of a doctoral degree. This kind of emphasis is not in itself problematic, but rather it is fertile soil for problems to grow from. As it applied to this team, when the PhD mind set is applied to this culture you get a problem. The problem is the expectation that this work is PhD level. Unfortunately it is possible to do research and authoring to PhD levels, but it has little value the company as a whole.
The team managers are looking for thesis style assessments on chemicals and products, but the divisions need only a quick look at the materials to flag any environmental issues. In other words the self-important PhD mentality is trumping the needs of those people who are requesting, utilizing, and plying for our work.
An example is acetone. Acetone is nail-polish remover and is manufactured and used in huge quantities all over the world. When it is used it tends to volatilize and thus enters the atmosphere. In the atmosphere it undergoes indirect photolysis and degrades. The half-life for this material is somewhat subjective, but ranges between a couple of hours to several weeks. The divisions need to know that if they use acetone, it will go to the atmosphere and degrade. The times are insignificant to their needs. It would be different if it went into the air and killed birds or depleted the ozone layer. As it doesn’t their done. Our management looked at the acetone assessment and said we need to add several complicated reactions that were just published. These papers detailed the way in which acetone degrades. I bet you can guess what the conclusions of the papers were – acetone goes into the air and degrades!!!!!!
As group members we have to get the assessment on acetone approved (company stamp of acceptance), and we need it fast, so we have to add the papers and their conclusions. This exclusively serves the PhD mind-set and fails the people who are paying for the work. Yet the management does not see it this way. They hold self-important views and hubris on the order of Zeus himself.
The push for more information is into being balanced with the returns of investing time to do such work.
The simple economics is that we are forced to add volumes of superfluous information to assessments that are more expensive.

Then on top of that our assessments are rarely (if ever read by the divisions). Here we are beaten into assessments that are excessive and verbose which are never being read. Of course our group still reads them, hence we are writing for each other????

I am filled with joy for my work. (That was sarcasm – you might need this if you are one of my children!)(they tend to use it but not understand it)(REMINDER TO SELF: all the good child psychology and behavioral modification techniques clearly state that sarcasm is counterproductive and should be avoided)

Shall we run down some of the other issues?
- constantly changing standards and directives
- hidden agendas
- a depth of work that is superfluous
- management in abstention
- client who is your boss
- multiple bosses
- demeaning and degrading attitudes towards the groups abilities
- previous history of being lied about and lied too
- second class citizen status
- inability to successfully address problems (or an inability)
- non-adherence to Standard Operating Procedures
- heavy handed management

I have not heard a good or kind word spoken about this place in quite some time. If this is the truth then I think I need to start speaking some. Hard as it may be, it makes a real impact.