One of the managers–one of those types who likes to monologue–was telling me that when the plant manager comes to the daily meeting, everyone is posturing to make themselves look good, by making other people look worse if necessary. He said it becomes a useless meeting where everyone is tearing each other apart, and that he and other managers had tried to explain this to the plant manager.

I had to think of the time for a few months when it seemed like the plant manager had quit coming to the meetings and was no longer interested. The other managers were rarely seen, and the meeting devolved into little more than a handshake on the day’s work, with some friendly (or not so friendly) put-downs thrown in.

This is not the first time I have heard that the plant manager has no business in a meeting about the day to day operations. But I think he can only afford not to be there when someone else is going to take care of the business for him. Somehow it still seems to require the plant manager emphasizing that their are customers who want their orders shipped before people become really eager to solve problems. People may point fingers more when he is around, but they volunteer a lot more, too.

So this is when we say that the plant manager needs to work on his management team. But we say this after a year of multiple general layoffs that included the elimination of two management positions and the firing–sorry, sudden resigning–of another. And even aside from the volatility of these changes, we are speaking of the great gamble: whether you can get someone better than you have now. When ordinary budgetary approvals are going two and three levels up, and you are located far away from attractions for the business elite, it is no small thing to speak of improving the caliber of your management team.

New York State General Fund out of money.

What Ben Nelson didn’t tell Nebraskans.

Economic Statistic of the Decade

Business has been picking up. We got caught out by unexpected sales driven by desperate promotions, followed by major months-long issues with our supply of steel (almost as important as electricity). We’re behind the curve, and we have been hiring back some production people to help ramp up production.

I ran into one of those people on Friday. I was surprised to see her as she had been let go quite a long time ago, before the cutbacks had affected any salaried employees. There could be more to this story, complexities I am not aware of, but the effect of seeing someone so far back in the queue working again was to provoke the suspicion that many people earlier in line had turned down the opportunity to work here. And I doubt too many of them have jobs elsewhere.

I’ve been told before that statistically we are very competive in our pay and benefits for this area. And I’ve heard stories from the other manufacturing facilities that can make this place seem enlightened. I wonder if the lack of enthusiasm for returning to work for Acme should reflect on Acme’s reputation, or on the work ethic of the departed? I know some of the salaried people had every intention of running out the last drop of their unemployment.

The best thing I could make of it is perhaps this person had a good reputation and was preferred on the call-back. But this doesn’t line up with my understanding of the context of her departure. So I am pretty sure it is a bad sign one way or the other.

Today I have science on the brain. Or at least some vague approximation of the word (I have real trouble spelling it, for some reason).

I spent some time reading up on Robert Hooke just because I did not know much about him other then he was Newton’s nemesis.

Reading it made me kind of depressed. If you ever get to thinking that you’re smart, you should read about some of the early giants of the enlightenment. When they weren’t making ground breaking discoveries in 42 separate areas of study (all of which they were pursuing at the same time), they were designing buildings, hard to counterfeit currencies, and building better watches. I think they benefited greatly from living in a time that was wealthy enough that many men could devote themselves to thought and yet it was still expected that a man of thought would be able to build things with his own hands.

But be that as it may, those biographies of early scientists are depressing for reasons other then how small they make us feel. The early giants of the scientific revolution repeatedly demonstrated they could be awfully small minded. They stole ideas from each other and did not give credit. They jealously guarded their own data and ideas lest someone else steal them. They slandered each other and tried to destroy all the works that their opponents left behind.

Reading all of those things, one can’t help but think of the recent climategate scandal. One is tempted to trot out the old adage “the more things change, the more things stay the same.”

But there is a crucial difference. The early giants of the scientific revolution had ideas that would change the world and stand the test of time. And they knew the value of what they had. That is why they fought like cats and dogs over who thought up the ideas first.

On the other hand, the scientists involved in global warming research have no clue what they are doing. They can’t even reproduce their own work, much less have it be tested by others. They hide their data not because they know it is of great worth, but because they know that it is next to worthless (and that’s being kind.)