Champion Of Six Sigma
I am now convinced the company is not at all serious about Six Sigma. If this is such a groundbreaking, important initiative key to our future success I would have expected management to assign a hot shot leader. Instead they announced Six Sigma training would be organized and lead by none other than The Beard. He’s been lingering here for a while as an “Individual Contributor.” They took away his supervisory role so he has nobody reporting to him anymore. He’s part of the good old boy network of managers in this division. While hardworking veteran employees are thrown out guys like The Beard are allowed to linger on until retirement. His pals have protected him from layoffs by granting him Individual Contributor status and assigning him projects nobody else would want. Most of those projects are like unwanted leftovers in your refrigerator. They don’t affect anything which is probably a safe bet he won’t be able to screw up royally. Let’s face facts. Anybody here worth a shit has better things to be doing with their limited time.
His previous assignment was some sort of vague training position. I heard The Beard routinely fell asleep during his meetings and training sessions. For example, he was supposed to be video taping technical training on Network Analyzers but he was too stupid to figure out how to transfer the video to software for burning onto discs. So his retarded solution was to present new technicians with power point slides instead. You can’t train green techs on circuit theory and PC board test that way. It’s not practical or useful. Before that he was directly involved in some goofy Malaysian initiative. The Beard made appointments in each department on each instrument line to observe how people did their job functions and then note ways to improve the process. I forget what that dumb program was called, but when it was my turn to show The Beard our button up process before shipment off the line he fell asleep in his chair. I was about two seconds away from slapping him across his knees with an instrument side-strap handle and asking him if he understood what I was explaining. One of his peers saved him though, he gave The Beard a nudge that startled him back into consciousness as I was reaching for a strap handle to hit him with that was on the edge of my work bench.
We used to call leaders of screwy corporate-backed programs “Champions.” Totally corny. Those were the unlucky employees assigned to lead whatever new industry trend crap being foisted upon us. I guess The Beard is now our Six Sigma Champion. I know he’s going to doom the whole deal somehow before it’s over with. But that’s cool with me. Six Sigma will fade away far sooner than it would in anyone else’s capable hands.
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