I'm starting to think that job advertisements for senior management positions in private companies (like the one I work for) should be worded like a lonely hearts column. You know - "Commitment-phobic CEO seeks hard-hitting, problem-solving QA Manager for meaningful long-term professional relationship." It would make it so much easier for people like my Jedi Master to wind up in a job which didn't have them wrestling with bosses they weren't compatible with, thus saving them from being on the receiving end of labels such as 'whinger.' Poor sod.
Cross posted to LiveJournal.
Friday, 29 June 2007
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
Education
One of the major factors in the Australian Code of Good Manufacturing Practice for Medicinal Products is that it is considered vital to train employees on the company's procedures. Now, here we do not have a formal training program, as such, although we have a little bit of framework. Our Human Resources manager (Ms Big, the daughter of Mr Big, the CEO) gets to thinking on that once in a while. Recently, she has decided that it would be a good idea to get some staff member to do some workplace training courses.
I, your humble Evil Paperwork Fairy, have been nominated (apparently by popular acclaim) as the person for the job. Personally speaking, I'm all in favour of it. I'm thinking that if I could do the whole of Certificate IV, it would be a good thing. Good for the company, and especially good for me, since it would give me another nice, solid string to my (admittedly fairly weak) bow.
But it's expensive. And with the current rate of spending at work (we're in the process of upgrading our production equipment, which is a very expensive process), I would not be at all surprised if I only do one unit this year.
I just hope that I remember to push for this again after the company has recovered some of the costs of the upgrade.
I, your humble Evil Paperwork Fairy, have been nominated (apparently by popular acclaim) as the person for the job. Personally speaking, I'm all in favour of it. I'm thinking that if I could do the whole of Certificate IV, it would be a good thing. Good for the company, and especially good for me, since it would give me another nice, solid string to my (admittedly fairly weak) bow.
But it's expensive. And with the current rate of spending at work (we're in the process of upgrading our production equipment, which is a very expensive process), I would not be at all surprised if I only do one unit this year.
I just hope that I remember to push for this again after the company has recovered some of the costs of the upgrade.
Monday, 25 June 2007
Thursday, 14 June 2007
They will complain
My immediate superior, identified by me as Darth Chaos, is, I hope, learning all about what happens when you try to change the world that everybody is used to.
The field in question was documentation. She didn't like the way we had our SOPs organised (by subject matter, for the record). She felt that they should be organised by distribution point. It was, she felt, much simpler. So she insisted on changing it. Throwing out the old SOP system in favour of her version. It's now been a good year, and we're still at it. And people are still whingeing.
I have a feeling that office politics, that field of perpetual frustration (for those on the receiving end) and entertainment (for those who are on the outside looking in), is what is driving the latest bout of whingeing.
The major Player and Perpetrator in this field of combat is the Production Director, She Who Must Gain Power. I've also been known to refer to her as the Empress of Production.
She and her consort, Master Spy, have been complaining about Darth Chaos' revised documentation system. Again.
Now, I've been trying to get the documents all changed over for quite some time now, ably hindered by a combination of busy schedules and complete lack of interest in reviewing documents. And people have been confused.
Most of Production have, I suspect, come to terms with the new system. They are getting used to the new numbering (which, yes, is more complicated than the old numbering. I was pushing for something simpler, personally speaking, but Darth Chaos wouldn't hear of it), and only rarely do they call me with the question of 'where is it?' They do not customarily complain to She Who Must Gain Power, or even to her off-sider, the long-suffering and highly stressed Grand Vizier.
She Who Must Gain Power and the Master Spy, however, never miss a chance to show us all up. But QA will get its revenge. Every time she receives a complaint about the new system, Darth Chaos intends to make the entire company sit through another training session on the new index. And she will continue to do so until She Who Must Gain Power and the Master Spy decide they've had enough.
Let's see who quits first.
The field in question was documentation. She didn't like the way we had our SOPs organised (by subject matter, for the record). She felt that they should be organised by distribution point. It was, she felt, much simpler. So she insisted on changing it. Throwing out the old SOP system in favour of her version. It's now been a good year, and we're still at it. And people are still whingeing.
I have a feeling that office politics, that field of perpetual frustration (for those on the receiving end) and entertainment (for those who are on the outside looking in), is what is driving the latest bout of whingeing.
The major Player and Perpetrator in this field of combat is the Production Director, She Who Must Gain Power. I've also been known to refer to her as the Empress of Production.
She and her consort, Master Spy, have been complaining about Darth Chaos' revised documentation system. Again.
Now, I've been trying to get the documents all changed over for quite some time now, ably hindered by a combination of busy schedules and complete lack of interest in reviewing documents. And people have been confused.
Most of Production have, I suspect, come to terms with the new system. They are getting used to the new numbering (which, yes, is more complicated than the old numbering. I was pushing for something simpler, personally speaking, but Darth Chaos wouldn't hear of it), and only rarely do they call me with the question of 'where is it?' They do not customarily complain to She Who Must Gain Power, or even to her off-sider, the long-suffering and highly stressed Grand Vizier.
She Who Must Gain Power and the Master Spy, however, never miss a chance to show us all up. But QA will get its revenge. Every time she receives a complaint about the new system, Darth Chaos intends to make the entire company sit through another training session on the new index. And she will continue to do so until She Who Must Gain Power and the Master Spy decide they've had enough.
Let's see who quits first.
Tuesday, 12 June 2007
How To Annoy The Evil Paperwork Fairy's Boss
One way guaranteed to annoy my boss is to say that the review of a major document resulted in something that was wrong. Her stress levels immediately shoot up to boiling point, and she starts ranting about how the complainants signed off on the document in question - in fact, the last couple of times it crossed their desks, they just signed it without even looking at it.
I, of course, agree with everything she says during this rant. How can I not? I, personally, do not understand all that much about the functioning of this company, except at a fairly general level, and except what is written in the documentation. All I can do is put the document into review at the appropriate time, and make changes that are requested. The content of the documents are largely the responsibility of others.
It's one of the basic aims of GMP - that the appropriate people take responsibility for the appropriate parts of the manufacturing operation. And that means the paperwork, too.
I, of course, agree with everything she says during this rant. How can I not? I, personally, do not understand all that much about the functioning of this company, except at a fairly general level, and except what is written in the documentation. All I can do is put the document into review at the appropriate time, and make changes that are requested. The content of the documents are largely the responsibility of others.
It's one of the basic aims of GMP - that the appropriate people take responsibility for the appropriate parts of the manufacturing operation. And that means the paperwork, too.
Thursday, 7 June 2007
I don't love fairies
The times in my working life which I find hardest to deal with are those times when nobody's given me any document-related work to do. The main problem at times like that is that everybody else apparently has better things to do.
This has also been known to crop up for me when I have to give a document to three of the people in the company I consider least likely to return the document to me. I don't much like it when I hand a document over, knowing that there is every chance of that document never being given back. Ever. It makes me feel like I'm handing one of my babies over to be sacrificed.
My personal method of getting over this is to rummage around in my pile of documents that could be profitably reviewed, until I find some that I can give to people who are much more likely to return them to me, properly reviewed.
Summarised, this means that when the Evil Paperwork Fairy is feeling unloved, she's likely to descend on somebody (or several somebodies) with a stack of work for them to do.
This has also been known to crop up for me when I have to give a document to three of the people in the company I consider least likely to return the document to me. I don't much like it when I hand a document over, knowing that there is every chance of that document never being given back. Ever. It makes me feel like I'm handing one of my babies over to be sacrificed.
My personal method of getting over this is to rummage around in my pile of documents that could be profitably reviewed, until I find some that I can give to people who are much more likely to return them to me, properly reviewed.
Summarised, this means that when the Evil Paperwork Fairy is feeling unloved, she's likely to descend on somebody (or several somebodies) with a stack of work for them to do.
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
Busy busy busy
One of the facts of life for an Evil Paperwork Fairy like myself is the fact that, as soon as things get busy, the first thing to fall off the radar of anybody who is not intimately connected with document control is the regular reviewing of paperwork. As a result, the first sign of an overly busy workplace is a large number of documents being overdue for review. The second sign, therefore, is an Evil Paperwork Fairy who has either spaced out in an attempt not to care, or who is stressed beyond belief because people keep losing her documents. Personally, I prefer the first approach. It's easier on the nerves to let it slide and to pretend to be a Flower Fairy for a while - I'd suggest being an Opium Fairy, but for one thing it's illegal and for another it's addictive, so I tend to settle for being a Lavender fairy instead. And, of course, it gives me much more time for surfing the net and blogging about my job. :-)
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
As time goes by
The more time I spend at this desk shuffling paper around, the more I realise the importance of a properly set-up database of metadata about the documents that I control. I am, incidentally, saying this as I finish redesigning my document control database (or, rather, the data entry that tends to follow on from such a redesign.). The number of tables I have got have shrunk to something far less ridiculous, and the number of queries that appear will, equally, explode rather dramatically. Well - more or less.
I think it would be very easy to get out of control with the quantity of metadata one generates and maintains surrounding documents. All I really have to do with them is to make sure that they are all under control and regularly reviewed. Which means that information on such things as document numbers, and dates of last review, are important. Information along the lines of which documents are referred to in other documents (in other words, a cross-referencing system) is relevant for the poor benighted Evil Paperwork Fairy, but only if it's set up properly. Otherwise it is nothing but a waste of space. My first attempt at cross-referencing was a waste of space. Hopefully, future attempts at cross-referencing will be a little less unwieldy. Hopefully.
A part of me would love to have the whole mess taken out of my hands and put into the hands of a computerised document control system - but the rest of me is loving the challenge of bringing sense to it all.
I think it would be very easy to get out of control with the quantity of metadata one generates and maintains surrounding documents. All I really have to do with them is to make sure that they are all under control and regularly reviewed. Which means that information on such things as document numbers, and dates of last review, are important. Information along the lines of which documents are referred to in other documents (in other words, a cross-referencing system) is relevant for the poor benighted Evil Paperwork Fairy, but only if it's set up properly. Otherwise it is nothing but a waste of space. My first attempt at cross-referencing was a waste of space. Hopefully, future attempts at cross-referencing will be a little less unwieldy. Hopefully.
A part of me would love to have the whole mess taken out of my hands and put into the hands of a computerised document control system - but the rest of me is loving the challenge of bringing sense to it all.
First Post
Well, I've been trying some alternate blogging services to LiveJournal, and so far two have proven themselves to be not really for me. So I'll try Google's in-house version for a while, and see how that goes.
So, who am I? I live behind a desk in Canberra, Australia, and I am responsible for ensuring that the company's documentation is correct. Hence the blog's title. I am the Evil Paperwork Fairy. As for everything else? Well, you'll see. Perhaps.
So, who am I? I live behind a desk in Canberra, Australia, and I am responsible for ensuring that the company's documentation is correct. Hence the blog's title. I am the Evil Paperwork Fairy. As for everything else? Well, you'll see. Perhaps.
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