Muddying the waters

Anarchist Prime strikes again.

He wants to keep the Equipment SOPs folder. I'd decided to get rid of it some time ago, and had been assigning document numbers accordingly. The end result is that the Equipment SOPs are currently very, very messy. Most of them are well overdue for review. Many of them are obsolete - but I don't really know which ones. And I don't know what sort of vision Anarchist Prime has for this folder, but you can bet it's not going to resemble anything that anybody's ever seen before.

Still, I don't have to worry about it before Christmas - he's got far too much else to worry about.

Stressbusting

Right now, I want some peace and quiet. Things are busy at work. We're building up to Christmas (which is getting really, really close), dealing with the aftermath of the facility upgrade (including power struggles between Production and Anarchist Prime, who insists on jerking people around without so much as a by-your-leave whenever a problem arises), and dealing with the aftermath of a TGA audit.

And people keep having conversations about what's going on in the corridor, right outside my bloody office! Regular interruptions I can cope with - that's okay. But when people keep talking in my doorway, it's dreadfully disruptive. It would be truly lovely to have a nice, quiet little office in a nice, out of the way location.

That said, it doesn't exist, and even if it did, I probably wouldn't like it much. I'd be getting worried about people forgetting me. A good second-best is an MP3 player with a nice, relaxing bit of classical music on it. Put the headphones on (and I have them on right now - the Brandenburg Concertos are nice and relaxing), and it blocks out all the surrounding noise. I can unwind, and stop daydreaming about that long, dull, 1000-odd-km drive home for Christmas.

And the music goes round my head...

We've started having daily meetings to catch up on what Production are up to, mainly so that nobody is caught by surprise by any requirements that we weren't aware of. Like starting materials that hadn't been released yet, and documents they need, and so on and so forth. It is, of course, another communications tool.

What Magicke and I have noticed, however, is that the two parties who are under direct pressure to perform are still not really listening to each other. They are, of course, under pressure from two different sources, one internal, the other external. Each party thinks that their pressure source is more important than the other's pressure source.

Personally, I wouldn't mind bashing a couple of heads together, and reminding them that we all work for the same company. That ultimately, we're working towards the profit of one particular entity, and that although customer relations and whatnot are important, the customers are not actually in charge of us (no matter how much they shout and try to bully people), and that perhaps the Managing Director (Mr Big, who is currently taking a direct hand in the management of Production - a necessary task whilst the Grand Visier is away and building up to maternity leave. Especially since the Leprechaun got in fast enough to convince Mr Big that he really, really did not want to be Acting Production Manager) should have the ultimate say in where our priorities lie.

Not that we really want him to take a direct hand in that sort of thing. It shouldn't be necessary.

It doesn't actually affect me personally. But I do find it a little bit amusing, when whoever is representing Production at these meetings (this time) has to say (to the Admin representative) for the umteenth time where their own requirements, goals, and achievements currently sit. I'm just glad it isn't me. I haven't got much patience for that sort of thing.

The Red Pen of Doom

Mr Big took a look at the Production schedule this morning, and decided (accurately, IMHO) that it was asking way too much of the staff. So he has attacked it with the Red Pen of Doom and made it much, much more manageable.

The Grand Visier, who normally makes these decisions, is absent for the week, but I'm sure she'd be delighted to discover the cuts that have been made. The Leprechaun certainly is - he's actually managed to get his validations work scheduled, now that the Red Pen of Doom has done its work.

I'm delighted, too. I may even be able to get ahead with the documentation, which will be a blessed relief.

Oh, yes. Now I remember...

With the current audit going on, and Anarchist Prime down with food poisoning (and threatening to come up for the audit now that he's out of hospital - we still don't know if he's joking or not), and my old superior, Darth Chaos back in action again to cover for him, I'm starting to remember why it was that Darth Chaos used to drive me up the wall.

She is, in her own special way, just as autocratic as Anarchist Prime. The big difference is that Anarchist Prime's patience is very limited and it doesn't take much for him to start giving orders. Darth Chaos, on the other hand, argues over things. She argues about the way she wants things done, instead of just ordering.

With a blunt order, I know where I stand. I know that it's a battle that isn't worth fighting. Therefore, if I still disagree with things, I'll switch to guerilla tactics (if I'm desperate) or just give up and go with the flow.

Darth Chaos' approach, however, leaves me five times as angry and frustrated, because it takes me five times as long to get through the whole mess of a conversation.

What's worse is that the conversation that prompted this post was over something that really should be sorted out by Mistress Mouth and I, in the post-audit sessions. It shouldn't be being done by Darth Chaos, whilst the audit is still going on. And, it is, in my opinion, a pretty trivial matter to boot.

It's why I grew to hate her so much whilst she was still a permanent employee here - she makes me so utterly angry and frustrated over matters that are completely trivial and nothing to do with her into the bargain!

A shameless gloat

I had an interesting conversation with Mistress Mouth this morning, regarding what the auditor had said about our Quality Management system.

Especially regarding the new layout, something which Anarchist Prime had basically steamrolled into place.

Basically, the auditor thought that the old layout was much, much better than the new one. The only thing that the new layout had which was an improvement on the old was that the new layout included a revision history, instead of just the revisions made to create the current document.

So there's one in the eye for Anarchist Prime! LOL!!!

Audit build up

We're in the grip of an audit right now. We've been building up to it for weeks now, and the Big Day has finally arrived. Thank god. The stress levels have been ridiculously high, and the battle between Production and Quality over where exactly everybody's attention should be focussed (Quality folk keep saying 'audit is everything!' Production have been patiently reminding them, every time somebody comes out with it, that we still have to manufacture. As the Document Control person, I've been quietly siding with Production on that issue. Not that I'd ever admit as much to Mistress Mouth, the Leprechaun, or Anarchist Prime (not that he has been an offender - he's been away and has managed to come down with a bad case of food poisoning, just in time for the audit. To be honest, I'm rather pleased about that.).

It's been interesting to see everybody's reactions when they are under stress. Mistress Mouth becomes uncharacteristically quiet and ever so slightly tragic. The Leprechaun starts fussing over things. The Grand Visier, who is currently heavily pregnant, is, at least on the surface, surprisingly relaxed. Although it may simply be that her pregnancy has sapped so much of her energy that she can't really summon up the strength to have a really good stress attack over anything. Anarchist Prime, of course, turns into an autocratic bastard.

Me? I get loud, cranky, and uncooperative. Since I'm also expected to be nice to people, I've been relaxing as much as possible.

The Leprechaun has been the greatest irritation. He's been running around trying to get the place tidied up (a somewhat futile task, to be honest), organising working bees and overtime and trying to get everybody (including me) to come in on the weekend to help tidy up because Production can't do it all. Personally, I chose to come down with a stress attack (yes, it was a conscious decision, although if I'm being more diplomatic about it I'd say that I was looking after my own physical and mental health, which is actually true) and got loud, cranky and uncooperative at him. (I don't suffer stress in silence.)

But this brings me to my main point - tidying up. I'm a naturally messy person, especially when I've got more stuff than places to put things. As such, my mess tolerance level is set pretty high. I tend to think that real friends will ignore mess, too.

Unfortunately, this doesn't help when preparing for an audit. I've learned to keep quiet about other peoples' messes in work-related situations. A tidy workplace makes a much better impression with auditors than a messy workplace.

It's a good idea, therefore, to get the person with the lowest mess tolerance level to walk through the place and point out the messy parts when you're preparing to make a good impression on somebody. And then, of course, tidy away anything that person points out. If it had been left to me, I would have missed most of the mess.

Prioritising

Yesterday was a very, very busy day. Especially in the afternoon. Come 4pm, when I'm usually winding down for the evening, things were heating up. Specifically in the arena of environmental monitoring. You see, they are manufacturing today. Everybody agrees that it's too early to be doing so. I don't think anybody really believes that we're ready for it. However, it's all taken on steam-train levels of momentum, and all we can do is to scramble around getting the bare minimum ready.

Yesterday afternoon involved getting the documentation (and forms) ready for environmental monitoring. I got the main SOP just before afternoon tea, with the faithful promise that I'd have the forms ready for authorisation by the end of the day. I didn't seriously believe it would happen, to be honest, but it did. Mainly because they prioritised the important ones.

Anyway. On to today. The complication yesterday is that QA are doing an internal audit in preparation for a TGA audit at the end of the month, and they are under the mistaken belief that my top priority should not be making documents available for Production to use in the next couple of days. They think I should be dropping all of that to run after them for the audit at the end of the month.

Darth Chaos, who has gone from permanent employee to contractor, is heavily involved in this, and she's the one I just told off for giving me problematic priorities. I told her to go and argue with Production over priorities if she really thinks it's that important. Somehow, I don't think she will.

I will be very, very glad when we get to Christmas. Because then I'll get three weeks' break, and afterwards, we will start to resume normal operations.

The reliquary

I've just started working on translating our archives into electronic format. Since the archive system I'm building bears no relation to our current set-up, however, and I have not yet obtained the space and filing cabinets I require to do the job properly, I'm starting in the areas where I don't have to reorganise anything.

To be more specific about it, I'm starting with the superseded master documents. That's right - our old SOPs. And, since the company is about 20 years old and run by people who don't like throwing anything out, there are some very interesting artefacts in the SOP archive.

The one I uncovered this morning was our original staff training record. The one that was written 20-odd years ago, when there were a grand total of two people working in the company. And one of them was part time.

I showed it to Mistress Mouth, who is in the middle of trying not to stress about things here (it's pretty frantic out there, really), so she could have something to smile about. I've showed her a couple of other things from the early days so far, and she's actually quite impressed with our early system. It's small, certainly, but it says everything that needs to be said.

The staff training record, for example, briefly covers the ongoing educational history of the company's only two employees (as it was then). It's two pages long, at 1.5 spacing. It says absolutely everything that needs to be said about the two employees in question. And, at the time, they were the only two employees that mattered in the eyes of the regulators.

Mistress Mouth commented to me that the current, fairly impressive, state of our quality system (yes, there are gaps, but not as many as she was afraid there'd be) makes a lot more sense when viewed in the light of the company's early documented history. She also told me that the documentation I've showed her was exactly right for a very small company, even in today's climate.

It puts things into perspective.

Complaints handling and GMP

If anybody out there in medical manufacturing gets landed with the responsibility of dealing with complaints on a regular basis (and experience has taught me here, over the years, that it's best if there is only one person who deals with complaints, if at all possible), here's a little tip: it is a significant part of Good Manufacturing Practice to produce a trending report on a regular basis. It may not be you doing it.

In my case, we have somebody else dealing with the complaints. I just have to produce the trending reports. This means that I need to be able to grab up the complaints folder every six months and find completed reports in it. All neatly filed away.

This is terribly important - regulatory bodies (or, at least, the TGA) absolutely love looking at complaints trending reports, and woe betide the company that doesn't have them. They take complaints very, very seriously.

In my report, I have to identify any trends that might appear. And, if a trend does appear, I make sure that I inform all relevant parties, and get properly documented procedures started to fix the problem that has caused the trend, before I close out the report. I get this done quickly so that I can refer to a Corrective Action in the report. Then, when the TGA sees this Corrective Action in place, they can reassure themselves that we, as QA, are fully aware of the problem and are taking steps to correct the situation.

First hand experience has told me that this is the best process to follow. I have only once found an actual trend in the complaints, and that was the process I thought was a good idea. The TGA auditor later read my report, saw that steps were being taken to correct the problem, and downgraded what would have been a major non-conformance to a simple comment.

Why am I talking about this now? It's for three reasons:

1. We have the TGA coming at the beginning of next month.
   
2. I haven't produced a trending report for the first half of the year yet.
3. I went looking for the complaints paperwork and discovered that none of it was complete. We've got somebody different handling complaints now, and she hadn't been bloody filling out the forms!

I let her that I needed them urgently, and she's promised them to me by the end of the day. When I look at them, we can see what needs to be done. I'm afraid that I may have to have a little chat with Mistress Mouth about this, and make the handling of complaints an issue. Which, frankly, we don't need. We've got too many other things to deal with right now.

Update: Houston, we have a problem. Somebody has been sending outdated complaints forms to the complainants. I'm going to have to have a chat with Mistress Mouth about this. The only positive to the whole thing is that there are only three complaints, one of which was withdrawn. Which means only two complaints, which means that there are no trends which are not related to the handling of complaints.

Google Chrome, round 1

I decided to give Google Chrome a go and, with that in mind, I thought I might as well post a preliminary review.

So far, it's not too shabby.  It's simple, and I don't have to look at a whole lot of extra nonsense whilst I'm surfing the net.  That said, it may take me a while to get used to not having a 'home' button, and it will definately take me a while to get used to not having del.icio.us at my beck and call the way I do with Firefox.  

I also rather like the idea of what they do with their tabs.  It's not something I'm likely to use too often, given that I like to have one window open with several tabs in it, rather than more than one browser window.  However, being able to merge two or more windows together when the computer insists on separate windows is a definate plus.

I do have one or two minor concerns - the first concerns their applications.  It seems to me that it is possible to make it too easy to download things onto your computer, and too reliant on anti-malware and anti-spyware software when it comes to preventing silly mistakes.  Sure, there's nothing to stop you ignoring the warning notices that appear when you're about to download something, but you at least have to push a button.  That said, I should add a disclaimer:  I haven't used the applications section yet.

The other concerns my experiences with the way Google software sometimes interacts with computers.  Google's desktop function is, according to those of my acquaintance who use it, a useful piece of software.  However, if your computer is a bit on the elderly side, it slows the system down to an infuriating degree.  My computer is (currently) fast enough to cope with whatever Google throws at it, but I wouldn't like to gamble with their stuff on an older machine.

I shall add more when I've spent more time with this software.  Currently, I rather like it.

There was movement at the station.

Things are getting busy at work for me. At last. We've got a government audit next month, you see, and I was starting to get nightmare visions of half the company arriving on my doorstep with piles of documentation in their hands and pleading looks on their stressed-out faces. I, of course, would have responded to their pleas with a hysterical laugh and an unsympathetic comment about how they should have done this sooner.

So, I had a little chat with the Leprechaun and the Grand Visier this morning. The result of that little chat was that Production have taken their kick up the pants with good grace (of course, I did put it rather more diplomatically than that), and the nomination of Messrs Wang and King (no, not their real names) as the best people to take the job on. That's a weight off my shoulders (and on to my workload, but given that I've spent weeks writing fanfic for want of something better to do, I'm not complaining about that.).

Then, I had a quick chat with Mistress Mouth (well - I call it quick...), and it turned out that she was having the same sort of nightmares that I was having, given that Anarchist Prime is the only person to have got any documents signed off for months now (and three of those were policies.). She'd mentioned those particular woes to Anarchist Prime, too, so I was, in one stroke, able to reassure her that it's all in hand and ensure that I've got some management support into the bargain, if I need it.

Thank God.

Document review in times of stress

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Why, why, why! do they always have to think that the documentation isn't important to auditors? Maybe I'm missing something, but I just had a brief chat with the Grand Visier that gave me the distinct impression that she didn't think the batch records were important. Well, sorry luvvie, but it doesn't work like that.

The batch records are the very heart of manufacturing. In a regulated environment, that's how it goes. The batch records are the things that spawn standard operating procedures, and it's often in the review of the batch records that deficiencies in the operating procedures come to light.

Plus, I'm going to have to remind her when I talk to her again after lunch that reviewing this little lot is a monster job, and if we leave it too long then it isn't going to get completed to the satisfaction of the auditors. Yes, the Grand Visier has a lot to do, but then, she's the Production Manager. Her responsibilities mean that she has to make decisions relating to the day-to-day running of the place. Decisions involving knowing the nitty-gritty of it all.

Yes, it's a juggling act and yes, she could probably afford to drop a few of the balls. But if she drops the wrong balls, then everything is going to go horribly wrong.

Pre-manufacture procedures

This is the first time I've worked with a properly experienced QA manager who fully understands the requirements and implications of what QA actually does in a company. And it's going to be a real education.

Mistress Mouth's predecessors were Darth Chaos (strictly speaking she was Quality Director, but she took a significant interest in QA) who specialised in Regulatory Affairs rather than QA, my old Jedi Master (to whom I shall refer retrospectively as the Guitar God, to distinguish him from Mistress Mouth) who had come up to QA from QC, via Validations (and according to those who came later didn't really know what he was doing with Validations. Not that I'm one to talk about that...), and his predecessor, who left before I properly started blogging and therefore never quite earned a nickname from me, who had come up from the Production line via QC and had got railroaded into the QA Manager's position (very much against her will) by Mr Big, who had decided that she was going to be good at it and, as I may have mentioned before, is one hell of a talker.

Mistress Mouth, on the other hand, has come into this job from other QA positions. She's the real thing, and I have a feeling that it's going to come as a shock to the rest of the company. I had a meeting with her this morning (well - it was intended as a training session, but you know how these things sometimes turn out when you're training your supervisor in existing company procedures - they often find something wrong with it, and you then find yourself spending three times as long as you thought you would whilst they pick holes in the procedure) about the process of approving pre-printed packaging. This is going to lead to changes in the way we go about the whole pre-manufacture process of getting the gear together, unless the Grand Visier, the Business Manager, and Magicke, collectively decide that she's barking up the wrong tree and decide to block her. And if they do, then I hope they can talk fast.

Personally? Well, I have a feeling that she's right. I just don't know how everybody else is going to take it.

What's going on...?

I'm starting to wonder what Anarchist Prime is up to. You see, yesterday, he actually apologised to me. Not once, but twice! For two unrelated incidents! (I can't even remember what the first one was about, but the second related to the intersection between document control and training. The procedure he's operating under involves me scanning documents into the system twice.)

He's never apologised to me before in his life! Even though I personally think he owes me a couple. Is he feeling alright?

I am wondering (and only time will tell) if this relates to the two unrelated incidents where he managed to upset me. The first involved him trying to get his hands on a piece of software that I happen to have on my computer, which I need to do my job, and of which the company refused to supply him with another copy. The second involved him instituting new templates whilst I was off work sick, and then expecting me to know all about them without him actually bothering to tell me. We had 'words' about both incidents. (The first time I had to get Human Resources involved. The second was, professionally speaking, strictly between the two of us, and was witnessed by Mistress Mouth, who happened to be in the office at the time.)

The first one must have come as a bit of a shock to him, because we'd always got on fairly well before that. He probably tried pushing me around, but as I didn't actually disagree with anything he was saying and trying to do and thus didn't make a fuss, he must have assumed that I was a pushover. I have been reliably informed that he referred to me as a "problem" for some time after that (for which I am totally unrepentant.). At the moment, I am wondering if perhaps the second incident made him realise that he has misjudged me. Only time will tell.

Of paper and bacteria

I've dumped Production in the cacky. It has been coming for quite some time now - in fact, I've been waiting for the perfect moment to do it. The perfect moment being, of course, the point in space/time when they are capable of fully appreciating just how much trouble they are in.

What is the trouble? We are building an Aseptic Manufacturing suite. And we have a paper-based system. We can't have paper in the critical manufacturing area the way we could in our old Cleanroom setup (which allows for a very small number of bugs.). And our largest batch document weighs in at 54 pages. Which means that autoclavable paper (which does exist) is far too expensive for the job.

I have to admit, I did see it coming. The switch to Aseptic manufacturing has been on the cards for a long time now. But Production have been far too busy to really appreciate that they have a logistics problem of epic proportions on their hands. I had a meeting with them late yesterday afternoon about it. We managed to outline the problem, but solutions are a long way off.

The real solution would be to computerise the whole shebang. But that is hideously expensive and, as a result, a last resort.

Either way, the word "innovative" was used during the meeting yesterday. I suspect we'll be hearing it a lot. I'm looking forward to finding out what the solution is going to be.

Up to his tricks again

Anarchist Prime is up to his usual tricks again - this time, it's simply a case of sending documents around for review, not bothering to pay any attention to the results, and then getting me to wander around collecting signatures for the final draft. Naturally enough, although most people were content to whack their signatures on the things without paying much attention to the content (a dodgy practice that I, as Document Control Officer deplore, even though it does make life much simpler some times), my friend Majicke quickly flipped through them.

Crime #1: All the clip art he's put through all this policy-level document. He thinks they're pretty. I think it's juvenile. But, being the person he is, he simply ignores everything he doesn't particularly want to hear. Result? I accused him of being juvenile, to his face, and got away with it. Which does nothing at all for my opinion of the man.

Crime #2: The spelling mistakes. I mean, really!

Majicke collared Mistress Mouth on the subject. Her advice, right now, is to simply let it go for this revision, because we need to get these documents in place far too badly not to allow mistakes through, and we'll sort it out in the next revision. Of course, she put it in rather more words than that. I put it even more bluntly to her. We'll sign them off to keep him happy, and change them behind his back later on. With any luck, if we get him well away from the documentation, we'll be rid of him before he causes too much damage. God help us.

Majicke, of course, can't bring herself to do that and is headed for another fight with him. Best of luck to her, too!

Soul woman

I'm trying to avoid letting Mistress Mouth become biased by the experiences of myself and others concerning Anarchist Prime. She's the management layer between him and me, and I am really quite absurdly grateful to her for being that.

As you may have guessed, I don't like him at all. And now that I've got some space between us, and a second opinion available who, as yet, hasn't learned to hate his guts the way the rest of us do, I find myself doing a bit of soul-searching. In other words, have I been unfair to the man?

To be honest, I tend to think that mostly I haven't. I still think that the next mistake he makes will be his last, especially now that we've got somebody else with experience in the Quality department. But I do have to remind myself that he does actually know what he's doing, at least in some areas.

My main point, though, is that I currently can't even think of the man without my face twisting into at least a sneer. And I am struggling to avoid the trap of automatically pushing the documentation he gives me to the back of the to-do list. That would be a dramatically bad mistake. Mistress Mouth, on the other hand, can still work with him without wanting to sneer. I shouldn't like to change that just yet. No point in making her job more difficult than it has to be.

Name change

As you may have noticed, I have changed the title of my blog from "Notes from the life of an evil paperwork fairy" to "The oracle's cave." This is mostly due to my new Jedi Master, Mistress Mouth (I'd offer my deepest apologies to her for that title, but she can talk the hind legs of a donkey...), who keeps calling me The Oracle. And I rather like it.

Superpaperworkfairy

Faster than a slow internet connection! More powerful than Windows 3.1! Can leap tall pieces of equipment with the aide of a stepladder! Yes! It's the Evil Paperwork Fairy! She's back in action!

Things have just descended into 'insane' mode at work. Finally, the refit has got around to doing the paperwork. And the Evil Paperwork Fairy is in hot demand! If this level of running around continues, I reckon I'll lose five to ten kilos. Which wouldn't be a bad thing.

People, of course, all want me at once. The Grand Visier and our Reg Affairs Associate both needed documents from the compactus, which took a bit of fiddling, given that the compactus is currently blocked off by some very large, very heavy pieces of equipment. That problem was solved with the aid of a stepladder, enabling me to climb up onto the very heavy (and basically box-shaped) pieces of equipment and thus down into the compactus. Fortunately, I managed to get back out again without damaging anything.

Then the Leprechaun decided that it was his turn. He's drafted the rest of the Production crew in to the task of document review (a first for a manager around here - usually they all say 'no no no, we've got to do it all ourselves and then expire from terminal stress!'), ostensibly to save me some work (which, lets be honest, it will). It's not, though. It's really just to save himself some work. But hey - I can respect that. Besides - it keeps the rest of Production occupied.

Anarchist Prime has been pretty quiet, though. Apart from helping him use Adobe Acrobat for the first time, he hasn't bothered me all day.

A short-lived reign. We hope.

The more time passes, the clearer it becomes that Anarchist Prime will not be working here for much longer. Every other week, it seems, brings yet more confirmation that he doesn't want to be here, and that he's not decent enough to be honest about it. The latest rumour is that he's been badmouthing the company and the boss behind everybody's backs - something which I would not be at all surprised if Mr Big had heard about. Which is simply added on top of the existing charge (which stands proven, by the way) that he's a bald-faced lier.

The main problem right now, though, is that he's the most experienced person that the Quality department has. The rest of us are hideously inexperienced, and Anarchist Prime's mistakes have only served to highlight our own lack of understanding. It has severely dented the already shaky confidence of the rest of the Quality team.

We've got a new Quality Assurance Manager starting next week (I believe...), and we're all pinning our hopes on her. The poor thing is going to be dropped right into the deep end, and I really hope she can handle it. Because if she can, it is becoming clearer and clearer that Anarchist Prime will get removed.

Nasty

Okay. I think I've navigated my way through the Nasty. The Nasty in question being getting a purchase order out of our financial folks for a Quality screwup. What made it doubly Nasty was that bloody Anarchist Prime went to Mr Big instead of going to the Human Resources and Business Manager. The latter is, I know from personal experience, understanding when it comes to cockups. The former is an unknown quantity.

Fortunately, I think that the fact that I am a mere underling (and managed not to show signs of responsibility for said cockup, even though I have at least some) protected me from wrath.

Never let it be said that Anarchist Prime was a complete and total waste of space. *evil grin*

Incompetence again

Anarchist Prime strikes again. He'd asked me to get some changes made to artwork for a product. The changes are necessary, but the procedures of our printers mean that we need to raise a purchase order to get them done. (They get tired of having their time wasted - I know how they feel!) Anarchist Prime told me he was going to sort out the purchase order. Of course, he didn't bother to actually do anything about it - oh, no. That would be too much like actual competence. Useless turd.

Advice to a certain major pharmaceuticals company

Who shall go nameless here.

To whit: Don't lose your master packaging artwork files. It's not the job of the company you have a contract with to keep this stuff for you, and you're bloody lucky that I do keep copies of absolutely everything anybody ever gives me. One of these days, somebody is going to decide that, because it isn't their job to keep track of this stuff, they will simply get rid of it. Then you'll be in serious trouble.

Crankypants

One of these days I am going to give in to the temptation to lecture assorted members of management - particularly those who have responsibilities in the field of contract manufactures that don't require time in a cleanroom - on the proper care and treatment of the Document Control Officer.

When you ask her to issue a batch document, for example, it should be in with all the other batch documents she issues, even if it is for a trial batch. It should not be in some mysterious location, with an equally mysterious file name, elsewhere in the system. She should not be forced to do a keyword search through the contents of each and every file in the system - which takes hours - in order to find the thing.

That situation should not be compounded by the disappearance of each and every single person who knows anything about the situation for an hour or so. This does not make for a happy Document Control Officer.

Also, there should only be one copy of it available for me to access. I should not have to use guesswork to figure out which document I should be bloody issuing!

Faces blank, mouths shut.

Repeat to self: Must not giggle in front of Mr Big.

Some time ago, Mr Big said something to the Office Gossip (who is also project managing the facility upgrade, very much against his will) about blocking out the upper windows in order to reduce the glare and heat in summer. This was evidently interpreted as "blacking" out the upper windows, and is being carried out now, as I type. Literally. They are putting black vinyl on the upper windows.

We were in the tea room whilst the workman was doing some of this. Mr Big came in and saw the results. He wasn't entirely happy with it. He'd forgotten all about the conversation he'd had with the Office Gossip, and didn't look (or sound) too impressed with the...blackness...of the results. He looked a little amused, fortunately. But the rest of us were still left stifling grins and giggles like crazy.

And the results will be worth it - everybody will be able to see their computers properly, and nobody will die from heat exhaustion this summer. (Okay. I am exaggerating. A bit.)

General Information Dump

I can rely on the Office Gossip to tell me what I probably need to know, especially when I lack confidence in Anarchist Prime to remember to pass on the relevant pieces of information. We're shuffling offices again, and this time, I'm included.

I shall be sharing an office, at least temporarily, with the server. This is fine by me. The server will have a new home, and the Office Gossip was kind enough to do a show and tell for me, explaining how it will all go.

My main source of stress last night involved the server, and a serious lack of information. I'd heard a rumour about my moving, and had overheard something which may (or, as it turns out, may not) have included moving the server. As I have an administrative password for the system (and am possibly the only person within the company who has bothered to remember same), I feel a bit...proprietorial about the server. Another factor is that our IT contractor and I had an informal chat about risk management and the server, and I know exactly how dreadful it would be if the server went down. (For us, it's the second worst thing that could happen to the company, barring fire or flood related destruction. There are almost certainly better IT people out there whose abilities could reduce the risk from major to moderate, but he's the one we've got.)

I shall have to have a chat with our IT person about getting some switches or something to give me some more elbow room in there, but that shouldn't be a problem. As long as I don't have to share the office with that bloody Xerox, I'll be happy enough.

The Office Gossip was able to tell me a couple of other things (apart from letting slip the news about my moving offices) too. Such as how Anarchist Prime's opposite number in production is working in Brisbane for 6 months before moving to Canberra, and how the new QA manager is starting at the end of this month.

So now I know.

Happy now.

Silly little details.

We got our new licence to manufacture today, with the appropriate names on it (Anarchist Prime and The Grand Visier's names, to be precise). It had a nice little cover letter basically saying, "here's your new licence, please send us the old one back as soon as possible." It was addressed to Ms Anarchist Prime. Anarchist Prime, if you've been paying attention to my previous posts, is, in fact male.

He's taken it with good humour. Our Reg Affairs associate and I both told him that the cover letter with the returned licences should be pointedly signed Mr Anarchist Prime. He actually needed to be convinced!

At any rate, we now have a cross-gendered Quality Director - at least on paper. lol!

Company?

If any real-life company was as bad as the 'case study' one in that training course we're doing at the moment, they would have lost their licence to manufacture - assuming, of course, that they weren't already in jail for killing somebody. I mean, I know it's just an example used for training purposes, but sheesh!

A massive sigh of relief

Anarchist Prime does have his reasonable moments. I think I should point that out, given the bad rap he's received in this blog recently.

You see, I, along with everybody else here at work, am up to my ears in online training on GMP. I, as the Document Control Officer, have to complete the modules on GMP, GLP, and Validation. This is fine. One of the features of a good DCO is that she has a good working knowledge and understanding of everything that goes on in the company.

I have completed the GMP module, and almost completed the GLP module (I have one case study left to wrestle with). I'm now up to the Validation module. This is the problem module, because Validations is my personal all-time-favourite insomnia cure.

So, this morning, with a bare week left on the clock to get through 7 units, I went and had a quick chat with Anarchist Prime. Fortunately, he had already realised that those of us who were not members of Production were having a few problems getting through the training in the allotted time span of one month (this, of course, is on top of our already-loaded work schedules. More arduous for the others than for me, but even I'm having troubles!). He told me that he'd like to see it all done by the time we are audited next in August, which I think is fair enough.

Yet another nickname

There is no rhyme or rhythm to it sometimes. With some people, I cannot come up with an apt nickname to save my life. Other people get several.

Anarchist Prime reveals more and more aspects of his personality, all of them supplying apt nicknames, as I get to know him more. The latest aspect has revealed a hell of a lot about him, and thrown up a nickname that is simply too good not to share. It comes courtesy of my friend, work colleague, and fellow sufferer, Magicke: Little Fish.

Why? He's bought himself a new car: a Mercedes 4wd. A Toorak Tractor. A big, fat, petrol-guzzling, resources-wasting piece of off-roader that will probably never see so much as a puddle across the whole of its entire life.

He's already spent quite a lot of his time trying to cover up his mistakes (and failing). Covering up his mistakes usually involves the rest of us lying for him, making excuses, and generally taking the rap. And none of us are willing to do that.

Little Fish is trying to be a Big Fish - or a bigger fish than the fishes around him. Unfortunately, the little fish sharing the pond with him have a nasty habit of turning into piranha. And we all know what piranha do to things larger than them when they get hungry.

New faces.

Some time ago (must be a good month or two by now), I would have reported that Mr Big has gone up in the world. Well, they had been interviewing for his replacement for a while now, and have come to a satisfactory conclusion.

Mr Big's successor popped his nose into the office today (he hasn't officially started, and I had heard no scuttlebutt at all about his appointment). I happened to be sitting in Anarchist Prime's office, waiting for him to sort through the stuff he had to do "before I forget" so that we could get on with the stuff he wanted me to assist with. One of the distractions he faced was the visit of Mr Big's successor, leading to the inevitable corridor chat between said successor, Mr Big, and Anarchist Prime.

Fortunately, it seems that if you can catch Anarchist Prime in a good mood, he'll answer questions about who the man chatting with Mr Big about house hunting in Canberra is.

I'm rather happy about this - one of the problems we've all had to deal with (indirectly) is that Anarchist Prime has not had an opposite number in Production. So, now he does. Will he inherit the title of 'Emperor of Production' from his predecessor? Time will tell. Like it or not, eavesdropping on a single corridor conversation of the nature mentioned above is simply not enough to see what sort of personality he has, and therefore is not enough to say what nickname he'll get from me.

Workplace training again

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm up to my ears in workplace training. More specifically, I'm on the receiving end. As I previously mentioned it's an online training course. I got through the GMP module quite handily, and was fairly impressed with it. I am somewhat less impressed with their GLP module. If they proof-read it at all, they did a pretty rubbishy job of it. I (and I am not alone) suspect that they simply didn't bother.

They refer to information buttons that are simply not there. They use an out-of-date ICH table. They refer to an ISO that we don't actually have (okay, so that's our fault, not theirs - but some warning that we'd need it would have been nice.).

Now, it's all very good and well going through this sort of thing when you've already got a background in labwork, but if you, like me, are a Document Control person who dropped out of a Bachelor of Science because you were failing before eventually stumbling into Quality Assurance, then when you find yourself confronting this sort of thing, you're going to be in trouble.

Mind you, even with the degree you'd be in trouble - university science courses (or so I have been told) simply do not prepare you for a regulated working environment. They don't tell you about GMP, or the prospect of going to jail if you get it wrong. Badly reviewed training courses really don't help the matter.

Online training with Firefox and Explorer.

I've been up to my ears in workplace training lately, which is why I haven't had much to say. We've got this online training program going at work, which means that every spare computer in the place is being used by our normally computerless Production staff - including the computers of those who are home sick.

At least one staff member is going to come back to find Firefox mysteriously installed on his computer - I've had a remarkable opportunity to compare Firefox and Explorer since this whole training excercise began, and I am having my opinion of the superiority of Firefox confirmed at every turn.

If you find yourself missing a plugin, for example, in Explorer - you have to chase through what seems like a hundred links, each leading to web pages crammed with tiny text. If you find yourself missing that plugin in Firefox, on the other hand, the software throws up a link to the version of the plugin that it recommends, without all the unnecessary commentary.

That's the main one. The rest of it revolves around a myriad of glitches and whatnot, all of which seem to make Explorer close down in the middle of what you're doing. Firefox has far fewer glitches, and when it does have to close down, it remembers what websites you were visiting, and asks you if you want to go straight back to them.

Firefox is so much simpler to use, and so much friendlier. I like it so much better!

By the way, if you want it yourself, make sure you have administrative priviledges on your computer - if you don't, you'll probably get blocked.

The unfair comparison post.

I'm starting to reach the conclusion that I just plain don't like taking orders. It's not just Anarchist Prime (although so far he's proven worse than the others) - I reacted badly to Darth Chaos, too. Why? I tend to reach the conclusion that they are interfering old sods who insist on changing systems around just because they like to make their employees stressed. (Still, I need to keep myself housed, clothed, and fed...)

So far, the only thing that Anarchist Prime has done that I fully support is in implementing the training software that his predecessor, Darth Chaos, was pushing for. Okay, the software has a few bugs in it, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the problems we've had with it have been pure incompetence on Anarchist Prime's part, but I'm sure we can sort it out.

I got used to Darth Chaos eventually - but she gave me the impression that she cared about more than just personal aggrandisement, which is more than Anarchist Prime has done. Sure, it's probably not fair on either of them to be comparing them like this, but Anarchist Prime has managed to make himself fairly unpopular since he started.

But you see, I was somewhat relieved when Darth Chaos left, too.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the two people we've had in the position here so far took on so much work and delegated so little of it to their subordinates that at least Darth Chaos had to be ordered by Mr Big to cut her workload back a bit - and the time will probably come when Anarchist Prime is either ordered to cut back, or will suffer the effects of stress. (I have a feeling that he will prove to be at least as rebellious towards Mr Big as I am towards him, when it comes to following orders from on high. Still, we all keep dreaming about the day Anarchist Prime makes his final mistake and gets his backside kicked all the way back to Melbourne.)

Stress alert.

Anarchist Prime called me from somewhere between here and Melbourne, asking me to sort out his remote access, because he had a heap of work to do over the weekend. This, I realised as I hung up, is the reason why he's been such a pig to work for - stress. He's not taking enough time off. He can't keep up with the demands of the job. How long is it going to take before he (or his wife) snaps, I wonder? Hopefully, it'll happen sooner rather than later - I don't hold high hopes, though. He's been enjoying the power he's got, and it will probably take a major breakdown for him to realise that he's in over his head.

With any luck, his wife will do what Darth Chaos' husband did, and threaten to leave him if he doesn't quit. With more luck, he'll listen to her and do as he's told.

SeerPharma's GMP training program

We've got a new training system in at work - it was 'launched' today. I managed to miss getting an invitation to the meeting (thank god!) - fortunately, Anarchist Prime warned me yesterday that I would be one of the first two people to go through it, so that I could (presumably) help everybody else use it. He took about ten seconds to pass the relevant information on to me (verbally). Everybody else was in that meeting for more than an hour.

What's the verdict? Well, I'm compiling a list of points to include as feedback to SeerPharma, whose system it is (including the comment that irregularly flashing lights do absolutely nothing to aid concentration...), and it has also reminded me of just how out of practice I am at studying (not to mention how much I dislike taking tests). That said, I think that, if backed up with regular reinforcement in a fully compliant workplace, it's pretty good. It sure beats the hell out of what we had before, which was two pieces of A4 paper with a pretty diagram taking up about a quarter of it, and a collection of dot points.

Hell and gone...

I have just got back to work from a couple of weeks on holiday (and most welcome they were, too!), to discover that my timing was absolutely perfect - I managed to miss the most recent hissy fit, and its aftermath.

As I think I've mentioned already, we're having a few problems with Anarchist Prime. The descriptive phrases "arrogant bastard", "sexist pig", and "power-hungry sod" get bandied about fairly regularly - especially after his latest incident. (The Office Gossip has been heard to describe him as a sexist pig, for those who work here and who may not have heard that one yet. The Grand Visier and I had talked about it somewhat seriously previously, and with a couple of of our other affected staff members, but it's interesting - not to mention a relief - to hear one of our local males come out with it too.)

While I was away, Human Resources arranged what they called a "Management Symposium". I wasn't invited, being just a humble underling (thank goodness. I wouldn't enjoy sitting through that sort of thing at all.). The focus, to those of us lucky enough to hear the true opinions of HR personnel, was (unofficially) Anarchist Prime, and getting him to cooperate.

It didn't work. I have been told that everybody had to get up and describe the role of their department, and that a 20 minute time-span was alotted. Anarchist Prime got up, and refused to stop talking, despite increasing pressure from Mr Big. (Mr Big finally interrupted him and said they'd continue this later. That was remarkably polite of him, I feel.)

HR also unveiled the new organisation chart, and this was when the brown stuff really hit the roundy roundy. The Production Manager and the Aseptic Services Manager had been put on the same level as Anarchist Prime. (Fair enough, I think, given that currently they are, essentially, Anarchist Prime's opposite numbers in Production. The other option would have been to increase Anarchist Prime's status to that of Mr Big's, and he would have been absolutely unbearable if HR had done that.) Anarchist Prime's response was, basically, to throw a temper tantrum, just like a five year old (although somewhat more coherently.). I would not have been at all surprised if he'd thrown himself on the floor and kicked and screamed.

That move has completely failed to endear him to anybody, especially our senior HR staff who were on the receiving end of this particular tanty.

Since then, our Reg Affairs Associate has managed to disassociate herself from him with the blessings and connivance of Mr Big (and well done to her for that - she gave me a rave review for her current supervisor, and I applaud him for it.).

After all that, I wandered out for morning tea, and discovered that the receptionist had also had reason to miss me dreadfully too, since the internet connection between here and Sydney had been playing up and a certain individual in Sydney had been asking her difficult questions about it. But he's the topic of a whole different rant.

At any rate, thanks to all of that, I'm a popular girl here this morning.

Duck for cover

I'm starting to think that Anarchist Prime is taking the short path to the firing squad - or at the very least, an almighty row with Mr Big.

After an issue with a product some time ago, certain in-process checks had been implemented, with other provisos added. This had been done under the instruction of our lord and master, Mr Big. Now, Anarchist Prime is fiddling around with them. I can understand Anarchist Prime's point of view in this, but he's completely disregarding previous actions and reasons in order to do so. Not even Darth Chaos did that!

I think the main problem is that he's an Alpha Male. Why I think that is a problem is because Mr Big is an Alpha Male, too, and their territories are crossing. And, in the Battle of the Alpha Males, Mr Big outranks Anarchist Prime in a big way.

I just hope the row comes when I'm elsewhere.

Scurriulous Gossip

I was chatting with the Office Gossip during my tea break, and the subject of Anarchist Prime came up. I had commented that Anarchist Prime was somewhat earlier than usual to work today, and the Office Gossip told me that Mr Big was starting to crack down on him.

What made this interesting was that another one of my work colleagues (who shall remain unnamed simply because I am yet to come up with a suitable nickname for her) told me that she thought Anarchist Prime was taking too many risks. I had personally thought that he was overstepping his bounds somewhat at various stages.

Because of that, it comes as no surprise to me that Mr Big is starting to crack down on him. All I can say is, "It's about time."

(Incidentally, the Office Gossip's next topic of conversation was to wonder who would be the next to leave. I kept my big mouth shut, having advance information on this subject, but I can't help wonder if the Office Gossip wasn't also thinking about Anarchist Prime. Because I do think that, for the various reasons mentioned above, not to mention those in my previous post, his days here are numbered.)

It's all the Quality Director's fault. Or possibly his wife's.

We have this little problem with Quality Directors: they have a) a tendency to come from interstate and b) their families don't want to move to Canberra. Darth Chaos did this, and Anarchist Prime is doing it too (albeit from the opposite direction). As a result, they only last a couple of years before their families put their foot down and start threatening divorce if they don't stop this commuting malarkey. (Okay, so I'm basing this on our experiences with Darth Chaos, but any spouse who is strong enough to refuse to move to Canberra is bound to start threatening divorce sooner or later. And I don't blame them. I always thought that 'until death do us part' was the whole point behind marriage.) It's only a matter of time, really, before Anarchist Prime's missus starts making the same threat. It took Darth Chaos' husband two years - Anarchist Prime is 9 months into his reign.

Now, their commuting isn't my problem - not directly, at any rate. My problem is more with one particular side effect: documentation. Anarchist Prime did exactly the same thing that Darth Chaos did when she came to power: they both took one look at our quality system and said, "This has got to change! New headers, new footers, new layout, new everything!"

This would be fine and dandy if our Quality Directors were to stay for more than two years. If they put in a good, solid six years or so before they were hauled back to home and hearth by their lonely spouses, it would be great! Five or six years is probably about the right time period for a complete overhaul of a quality system. Two years? That's even less than our standard review period! (We go for a three year lifecycle, barring other required changes.)

Oh, well. At least this time I don't have to give the whole lot new numbers as well.

RSS is good.

Why the hell can't the TGA have RSS news feeds like the FDA does? It would be so much simpler to scan a newsfeed every morning rather than surf the website for updates (or, of course, subscribe to a blasted email newsletter.). Grump.

Farewell parties

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but my Jedi Master is leaving. This is his final week. So, Principal Girl arranges for us all to go out to a Turkish Restaurant nearby for lunch on Friday. This is all very good and well and normal. But then Principal Girl decides that we can't possibly manage without having one of our bring-a-plate efforts as well.

She decides, in her infinite wisdom, that Thursday for afternoon tea is the go. Fine. She told us this yesterday. After lunch. After the lunchbreak when I had already gone to the supermarket to pick up a few things.

Naturally, most of the people in the room then say, "Oh, please bring your fabulous chocolate and raspberry cupcakes!" (I happily throw aside all modesty at this point to say that they really are spectacular.) Equally naturally, I don't have all the things I need, leading to a second trip to the supermarket that evening.

Therefore, I have a recommendation: when organising farewell parties, two or more days' notice are required. Minimum. One day to bake, and one day to decorate.

But, even though they are a little bit fiddly to make, and I didn't have everything I needed on hand (one of my first priorities for choosing recipes for this sort of thing is whether or not I have everything I need already), he's worth the effort.

Control freaks

Anarchist Prime has revealed his true aspect at last: he is a control freak. He, of course, prefers to describe it as "taking a hands-on approach". He may come to regret this, because there is, of course, one sure-fire method for dealing with a control freak. You give them exactly what they ask for. And then some. You pile work on their desks until their brains explode. You give them wide-eyed, helpless expressions as often as you need to. You ask them brainless questions.

Let's see how long it takes. Heh heh heh.

Whelping.

The Boy Next Door (who looks after the warehouse and Goods Inwards) has recently reproduced. Today is his first day back at work, and he thoughtfully (given the interest in babies and small children that is usually displayed in this workplace) brought in an old iPod with a collection of baby photos on it. From what I can see, the baby takes after his father, and that is pretty much the extent of my response. I don't have children, and have never even had any maternal impulses.

However, Taldals and Principal Girl (who started working in Human Resources a few months back) both started pouring over the photos. Given that Principal Girl very quickly decided that cake was the order of the day for morning tea, I had wondered whether Taldals would be the first to reproduce, or if Principal Girl would. I asked Majicke what she thought, and she told me it would almost certainly be Principal Girl, given that Taldals has a husband who says 'no' to having children at the moment.

Fair comment says I, even though we've got the full scale melodrama known as The Wedding to get to before we start on the whole I'm Having A Baby production.

Australia ^&*(^% Post

I swear (literally) that Australia Post are the most useless bunch of morons that I have ever had the misfortune to use. If you ever have important documents to move around this country, do not use Australia Post, use a courier. They may be more expensive, but they are much more reliable.

That is all.

They come, they go...

Well, we're headed for yet another change in the lineup. My Jedi Master has resigned, and is leaving in four weeks. Goodness only knows what's going to happen next. Perhaps Ross will try to con one of our newcomers into switching over into QA. The Leprechaun might be up for it - he's one of our newcomers (and has the most gorgeous Irish accent. I know it's typecasting, but that's just too bad. He hasn't been here long enough to display enough personality traits to call him anything else), has a background in Quality, and seems to be missing it more than somewhat.

Besides which, his role is largely Validations related (on the Production side of things), and our Validations people (of which my Jedi Master was one) have a disturbing habit of turning into Quality managers.

Ch...ch...ch...ch...ch...ch...changes!

Anarchist Prime has finally decided to start making changes to the Quality system. This is only to be expected, and I think the only reason it's taken him so long to get around to it is that Mr Big has been running him pretty much ragged since he took over.

His first act has been to get me to put a hold on all document review. Nothing is to be reviewed without his say so, until he's got time to get started on the changes that he needs made. Fair enough. It's also not going to affect the level of document review that's going on around here by so much as a pixel. I'm not sure he's figured that out yet, and I for one am not particularly inclined to inform him, given that I don't think even he could do anything about it.

He also wants to change the employee structure temporarily, so that I report directly to him. This will last until he's finished making changes. Previously I had officially reported, naturally enough, to my Jedi Master. (Unofficially, I spent a fair amount of time parked in Darth Chaos' office reporting directly to her. Anarchist Prime isn't a big favourite of that sort of approach, which I am actually quite pleased about, so I'd reverted to doing things the way I was supposed to.)

The main reason that I can look forward to it is that he's given me a brief rundown of what he wants to do with the document structure, and it's not affecting the system I created too much. Plus, he's a much better communicator than Darth Chaos was, which makes things so much less stressful. Some things, however, are going to cause some consternation, I think. But they will bring us more into line with good documentation practices, and I have a ringside seat, and a licence to say 'I'm just a humble underling. Go argue about it with Anarchist Prime.' I shall look forward to the fireworks.

New guy

We've got a new guy starting today. He's Irish. I loooooooove his accent!

Stress alert.

I think I'm letting the Grand Visier's stress get to me. It's turning into something of a running joke around here - will the Grand Visier or my Jedi Master be the first to have a nervous breakdown? Personally, I think the odds are at around 50/50.

At any rate, we're starting to get the distinct impression that one of our clients doesn't really know what they're doing and, given how highly strung the Grand Visier is, this is causing her a certain amount of stress.

She's very good at passing stress on to other people, even people as relaxed as I am.

The main problem, I suspect, is that she and I have each inherited parts of this situation from Darth Chaos and the Empress of Production, both of whom were highly experienced and capable of not letting other people take any of their own stress on board. I just need to keep breathing steadily and reminding myself that I am cool, calm and collected. I do not need to stress about this. All I need to do is deal with the packaging which, given how little I have to do at the moment (god help me, I've started working on fanfic again. On work time! There's a rather nice little piece of freeware out there called FreeMind, which was developed by a published science fiction author to help him write stories...), is not that difficult to slot in.

bored, bored, bored...

I never really realised just how many hours of work Darth Chaos added to my workload until now. Now that she's gone (and Anarchist Prime is not dumping work on me the way Darth Chaos did), I'm left twiddling my thumbs. I'm just beginning to contemplate indulging in make-work, as an alternative occupation to hassling QC for documentation that they haven't got time to do, or writing the trending report that I have right now, which is the last piece of work I'm going to have to do that is even remotely meaningful until I have to start covering for QC by way of sampling.

What have I been doing? Surfing the net. Musing about courses that I could be doing. Looking for information about courses I could be doing. Wondering what sort of value they could be adding to my career. Surfing the net. And, of course, surfing the net.

In other words, I am just starting to approach that inevitable point in the document controller's life known as "bored shitless."

If it wasn't for unrestricted internet access, I'd probably be writing fanfic right now. If this goes on much longer, I shall probably start writing fanfic again. Given enough practise, it might even be readable.

The Unknown Practical Joker

It seems we have a unknown practical joker in the place.

You see, we have an in/out board at reception, so that our poor, long-suffering receptionist actually has a clue as to who is and is not around when people ring for them.

We also have a Business Manager-cum-HR Manager who spends more time out of the office than in. This, as you can imagine, is not a terribly welcome trait in an HR Manager and has led to some mostly unspoken negativity about the lady in question. (She has recently taken on a new person who is being groomed to take over the role of HR Manager, a step which I personally regard as being terribly positive and foresighted of the aforementioned Business/HR Manager. The new assistant is incredibly young, but as she has "human resources" written in large letters across her personality, I think she'll become what she needs to become.)

The Practical Joker went to the aforementioned in/out board, and superglued the magnetic tag for our absentee Business Manager into the "out" position.

/falls about howling with laughter/

The Business Manager is, naturally enough, on the rampage about this. Meaning that I have to keep a straight face at work if the subject comes up.

No, I'm not responsible, although I can think of any number of people in the company who might be.

ROFLMAO!!!!!!

All hail!

Another tag to add to the collection, and for once it is mine, as applied by another member of staff (who is yet to acquire a nickname): "All knowing fountain of knowledge person." /blush/ I'm not. Really I'm not!

Tears in the fabric of work

My previous post mentioned a rift between Quality and Production. I think it is more a rift between the Grand Visier and Quality, since we seem to get on quite well with the other Production staff.

The main problem, as I see it, is that the Grand Visier really needs to grow up. She keeps making a fuss over quality issues that, whilst they may possibly affect Production (which is why she found out about them in the first place), shouldn't do so because Quality is rather more on the ball than that and are quite capable of fixing such problems as they arise without any outside input.

Plus she showed signs of not taking my paperwork seriously. That, of course, is unforgiveable. A lesser Evil Paperwork Fairy would have punished her by drowning her in documents to review, but I am a bigger person than that.

I was telling the Wise Woman of the South about this over the weekend, and she commented that she felt sorry for the Grand Visier. I told her that I would probably start feeling sorry for said Grand Visier once I got over the urge to give her a good hard slap. That didn't happen until Sunday.

I really doubt that this will end well. I think Mr Big knows very well what sort of a person the Grand Visier is, and if Anarchist Prime isn't able to sort her out and it goes higher up (which may well happen - I can envision all sorts of scenarios in that initial confrontation), I wouldn't be surprised if she gets the Right Royal Order of the Boot. Personally, I'll keep feeling sorry for her, but I won't miss her.

Conflicting stories

I'm hearing conflicting stories (well - sort of) about my documentation. One comes from the Office Gossip, who told me that he'd heard that the Overlords of Regulatory Darkness thought we had good documentation, but had noticed a rift between Production and Quality. The other comes from Majicke, who heard that the aforementioned Overlords were going to crack down on our documentation the next time they audit us.

Which is true? Well, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if both tales were true. The documentation is good. But much of it (and mostly the simpler stuff, like chemical specifications and whatnot) is out of date.

The interesting thing is that both tales came out of the same social do, which raises an interesting point about the way different people hear different things coming out of the one conversation. Not that I'm going to devote any more space to that here. I'm more concerned about that backlog I mentioned above.

I'd rather like everybody to know about the Overlords cracking down on documentation - it might just make people stop shoving the documents to one side just because they've got a full load of things to do without it, and actually organise their time better so that it bloody well gets DONE!

Something's Up

Okay. We've got Shutdown coming. (Yeah. Still. It may even happen according to the date I got today. But I'll believe it when I see it.) Fine. But the names on the licence for Hotel California need to be changed so that Majicke and the lady currently known as the Grand Visier are mentioned on it. So why has Quality been told to hold off on getting that changed...? I smell a rat. What's going on...?

Deadlines

I am in the enviable position of having a moving deadline. I have been told by my Jedi Master that I need to get the documentation system sorted out (ie all properly within its review period) by the end of Shutdown. I nearly had a heart attack when he first told me this, but since then I'm seeing the up-side.

The rest of the company, for example, now has no excuse to put off doing their documents.

The thing that really makes it enviable, though, is that Shutdown keeps getting moved back. Every week, it seems, the date has been pushed back. Which means that I have been given a deadline which is constantly running away from me.

It can't continue. Really it can't. Sooner or later, either Shutdown will actually happen, or my Jedi Master will get fed up with it all, decide he wants his audit report closed out, and insist on a firmer target.

More nicknames

A nickname for my workplace has presented itself to me.

During our morning tea break, we discovered that yet another of our temps has been made permanent. She was one of four people in the room at that particular moment who had started as a temp.

In fact, Magicke came here for a few weeks' work experience, and was permanently employed before she knew it.

Therefore, my workplace shall forever be known here as the Hotel California, because you can check out any time of year, but you can never, never leave...

lol.

For fear

There is something about an internal audit - especially when you know that the Overlords of Regulatory Darkness are going to be auditing you later in the year - that makes managers realise that perhaps they should stop procrastinating about those outstanding documents you've been trying to get them to do for ages. I've managed to get three separate 'must have' documents signed off in the past week - documents that have been shoved aside with comments of 'things will be changing soon' and 'I don't really have time for this now.' (Yes, Magicke, I am looking at you over that second excuse. Darth Chaos favours the first one.)

As a mere peon, the only threat I can make towards procrastinating managers is the one about the consequences of not having 'must have' documents in place when the Overlords arrive to check up on us.

All I have to do now is remind myself of the satisfaction I shall feel when I get the last of our other out of date documents signed off - it's a monumental task.

Internal audit result

My Jedi Master wants me to get all the outstanding documentation up to date and authorised by the end of Shutdown. /faints/

Gazumped again

My Jedi Master keeps having to put off his internal audit, because certain other parties *cough*Darth Chaos*cough* keep stealing his opening meeting time. I've talked about Darth Chaos being pointy headed before, and this has got to be yet another example. Mind you, Jedi Master is being terribly patient (or possibly just fatalistic) about the whole thing.

Perhaps if we camp out in the staff room for a week, we'll actually manage to have the opening meeting without losing out again.

Titles

This comes via my friend Magicke, from a former colleague who now works for the Therapeutic Goods Administration, our regulatory lords and masters: they shall now be referred to here as the Overlords of Regulative Darkness.

LOL!

Trending reports

The main problem with trending reports is that mistakes that happened earlier during the year have a nasty habit of impinging on the awareness of management, after having been safely buried. In this case, I was involved, at least on the periphery. It was a change in packaging, and, IMHO, was very badly handled.

The Change Control forms were not produced until part way through the process, when they should have appeared at the very beginning.

People were not informed until right at the end (often by Yours Truly), when they should have been notified at the very beginning of the impending change by upper management, and kept in the loop of the progress of the whole project.

And, some time after it was all over, Darth Chaos confessed to me that she had had her wrist slapped by Mr Big over the ultimate cost of the whole affair. Which is why I am reluctant to mention the whole thing in this trending report, even though I should, because it was the cause of a non-conformance in a batch record.

The hell with it. I'll bury it. I don't want to go through the whole business again...

Kicked upstairs

Since Mr Big got kicked upstairs during the Christmas break, he's come to realise that he's got a much, much bigger toybox to play in. So to speak. Previous editions of The Grand Plan involved the company being split in two because we didn't have space in our current location. Then Our Lord And Master, in the USA, decided that the company should purchase land to build a facility on. There was one small problem with this plan - there is no industrial land available for purchase anywhere in our current location. Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.

So now, we're up to Plan D. Just to recap, Plan A involved upgrading the current facility. Plan B involved renting a place in our industrial area and upgrading that. Plan C involved actually purchasing land. Plan D involves upgrading our current location as in Plan A, but also building an entirely separate facility in either Sydney or Melbourne.

Personally, I would love Mr Big to build a facility in Melbourne. I don't like Sydney much, and the parent company has a presence there already. I love the idea of moving to Melbourne (I haven't previously because I also like living in Canberra too much to go to the bother of changing houses, jobs, and locations.). My family live in Victoria, and I'd actually be able to visit them occasionally if I was in Victoria as well. Plus certain other members of the company have reacted to the idea of Melbourne with enthusiasm. Anarchist Prime's permanent home is in Melbourne. Taldals' family live in Bendigo. Magicke simply wants to move to Melbourne and thinks she can talk her partner into it. Goodness knows what everybody else thinks of the idea. I love it.

Note to self

When somebody gives you a contact for some reason, even when it's somebody else's responsibility to sort things out, keep it. You never know when you're going to need it again.

Why? Well, it turns out that we aren't the only company that has physical artwork, and no electronic files thereof. It's just that we, for some reason, get to sort out this other company's artwork, due to a contract we have with them.

There. I think that's vague enough to get the idea across without giving pertinent details.

Sigh.

Phone Tag

There always seems to be someone around who does this - asks you to contact them ASAP, and then makes another phone call, so that when you do call them back, you can't get them and wind up leaving another message.

Once in a while is one thing - but I've got a contact who shall now be referred to as the Phone Tagger. This is the second time he's done this to me.

Grump.

The Winds of Change

We have a new Quality Director coming up. He's here already, and he's definately showing signs of earning the title of Anarchist Prime. So far, he looks like he wants to ignore our current document format, which has been laid out and followed. He's got Darth Chaos and my Jedi Master saying 'he can't do that!' Still, this is a changeover period.

Things promise to be interesting. We've got our OOS procedure in review, and I already know he wants to change it - I intend to advise our new QC manager, Magicke, to sit on the procedure for a while until Darth Chaos has left (she's just gained her managership, and documents need to be changed to reflect that.).

The main struggle, I think, will be in persuading Anarchist Prime to slow down long enough to actually finish what he's started, and implement the changes he's making. Because, if he doesn't, the changes and new procedures will be largely ignored. I don't think he's figured that out yet. Hopefully, my Jedi Master and I will be able to manage it.

One of those mornings

I've had a delightful start to the day. First of all, there are still rats in my roof cavity, and I can't seem to get my hands on anything deadlier than rat traps (which I can't apply) or rat bait (which the rotters don't seem to be interested in eating). Then, I start out for work, and my mp3 player (an iRiver) kept crashing. Finally, I get to work (having settled on listening to the radio, which my mp3 player seemed to be able to handle), and discover that there is no milk in the place that isn't off. This, of course, is *after* I pour some onto my cereal.

So, I started out the working day by eating the kahlua muffin I'd brought for morning tea, a piece of fruit, and a packet of chips, for breakfast. Then I discover that the one pest control company I managed to call before my phone ran out of juice couldn't come and do anything for me until mid February, leaving me falling back on my own rather limited ingenuity in the rat-killing stakes. I'd been thinking of gas-bombs...

At any rate, I did manage to solve a couple of problems. The mp3 player problem went away through the application of money - I've bought myself a Sony walkman, and have discovered, to my delight, that it uses Windows Media Player, which means that I am currently charging the thing up, and have copied several albums onto it already. I'd read a review saying that it was the pick of the bunch, and I'm beginning to think that the reviewer was right. The iRiver was much trickier to deal with. The downside of the Walkman is that I can only charge it through my computer.

I also collared the Office Gossip as he was passing for a quick chat. I showed him the vermin wire I bought, and drew him a little picture of where the rat hole is. He told me that I could just shove the wire through the hole and flatten it with a hammer. Which means that problem number #2 was solved - all I have to do now is push a tile back so that I can do something slightly more scientific with the rat poison. Hopefully, if they are confined to quarters they will eat the poison. Especially if I smear it with something they enjoy eating. Perhaps dog-food...

A lot has happened

Bloody hell. It turns out that The Hyperfit One in Sydney has resigned - his final day was last week. So has our Validations manager (for reasons unknown, at least to me, but I'll probably find out more later). What with the Empress of Production and Darth Chaos also leaving, we're having a pretty massive upper-levels management shift.

What is going to be funnier is that apparently Mr Big, who is still on holidays and is at the tennis, doesn't know about the Hyperfit One's leaving yet. To be honest, I do doubt that he doesn't know - surely he would have been contacted and informed.

It seems I am living in interesting times right now, god help me.