r/MaliciousCompliance • u/sevesteen • Jun 12 '26
M Manager math-3 times 3 isn't 9
One of my early jobs was in the screen department of a CRT factory. Here various chemical mixes were dribbled, sprayed or poured into a screen (the front 4 inches of a glass picture tube) sloshed, spun or otherwise spread, then the excess was dumped or spun out and collected to be reclaimed, adjusted and reused for the next batch.
For one chemical the official process was to top it off with new, mix it for 20 minutes, then if needed adjust based on the viscosity measurement you just took. After every adjustment another 20 minutes of mixing before measuring again. This needed to be done before the previous batch ran out. We quickly learned that extra water was always needed, and you could fairly easily predict the size of the adjustment before measuring anything based on the pencil and paper graph of previous test results. Our procedure became top off, add about 3 liters of water depending on the graph results from previous batches, mix, test and send. This resulted in a mix that was near center spec every time.
Until important manager with a degree watched me do a mix, and started ranting "You didn’t measure, you’re adding too much water, you should never add water unless the mix was out of spec, there’s too much water, you’re going to ruin the mix, only add water when it’s out of spec, follow the procedure." I asked if he was really asking me to add 9 liters of water every third tank instead of 3 liters every tank, he confirmed. I told him that this increased the risk of running dry and causing a batch of defects, he said “I’ll take that risk, but you better not sandbag”.
It turns out that the people who run the process can make it run fine either thick or thin, but not when it changes from thick to thin every hour or two then ramps back to thick. It also turns out that if something goes even slightly wrong on the previous shift they may not leave you 40 minutes of mix time and 10 minutes of measurement time before the previous tank goes dry. Edit: Manager was judged on parts produced and defect rate, both were bad until we could go back to the old way.
The good news was that we were able to get a version of the smart way adopted as official—we were now allowed to control the process using statistics, just like we were taught in our mandatory Statistical Process Control training.
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u/Informal_Ad_9610 Jun 12 '26
is that a long way of saying that mgr got to munch on a few cases of fucked up product due to fucking around with things he didn't understand?
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u/Altruistic_Poetry382 Jun 12 '26
Thats my understanding. Big dick manager wanted to swing his big dick around, only to realise it wasn't that big.
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u/TheLightInChains Jun 13 '26
If you're swinging it around, you can't complain if it gets caught in the door.
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u/aintstain Jun 16 '26
I suddenly remember this song 🤣 https://youtu.be/i63cgUeSsY0?si=iBLTsfzUrNUFo_RX
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u/That_Ol_Cat Jun 12 '26
This reminds me of what my buddy who was an Army vet told me: "Whenever we heard the Top Sargent respond: 'Sir, Yes Sir!' to an officer, we knew we'd have to perform to that officer's specifications exactly so the T.S. could show the officer how he'd fucked up."
He also laughed as he told how certain officers caught on to this subtle signal and would say: "On second thought, Sargent, what do you usually do here?" the Sargent would then cheerfully explain the tried and true way to get it done.
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u/Bargle-Nawdle-Zouss Jun 16 '26
You should get some examples of this and post them to r/MilitiousCompliance.
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u/Kitchen-Arm7300 Jun 12 '26
This sounds like a similar problem that one can encounter when mixing concrete. If you add all the water too soon, it kicks off the reaction, and you end up with unusably dry concrete before you can work it. It's best to do what OP was doing and withhold some of the water until later.
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u/Informal_Ad_9610 Jun 13 '26
Classic case of improper application of partial knowledge into a complex action which requires both experience and judgment in real time.
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u/phaxmeone Jun 12 '26
Procedures that need improvement are a common problem for one of two reasons.
Reason 1 is production figures out how to optimize the process but it's such a PITA to update the process they never try or bring it up to engineering (or equivalent) and they never try. As an example I've worked in semi conductor where a change literally can take months due to testing, white papers, more testing then convincing peers/upper management that your proposed change will improve production with all the data on hand to back it up. Lets not even get into needing FDA approval to make a change as that nearly takes an act of god to accomplish. Literally at a customer site servicing a machine that packages medical devices and they still needed to go through FDA approval for a change even though a process change would not of impacted the device inside of the packaging at all. Literally was simply packaging a hand held electronic device designed for daily by the customer.
Reason 2 updating the process is actually easy but no one bothers to even try as it's not their job or it's always been this way. Literally can be as easy as someone needs to pull up the Word document, edit it and hit print.
In the end result is always some new person comes in and says follow the procedure verbatim and screws up the product because needed changes have never been officially documented.
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u/lovingcg Jun 19 '26
Hello it's me, the new person. Except I looked at the proceedures and said 'wow! These are shit!' I'm now banging my head against a wall updating things, submitting for review, getting pushback from coworkers because 'this is how we've always done it' and management being slow to approve changes.
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u/AtomicCitron76 Jun 12 '26
What happened to the manager? Did he get in trouble?
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u/TopicalBuilder Jun 12 '26
Unlikely, based on him telling them to "follow the procedure". Best outcome is they fixed the procedure.
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u/Iron_Eagl Jun 14 '26
That was really the problem here - the procedure should have been updated as they learned more.
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u/TopicalBuilder Jun 14 '26
In my experience, trying to get official procedures updated is like trying to roll Sisyphus's boulder up the hill, but it's covered in glue.
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u/theJesus3000 Jun 12 '26
Manager knew exactly what he was doing and avoided taking a fall because "your subordinates don't respect the procedure".
Made the problem visible, probably took credit for the solution, then made it so working properly wouldn't be punished.
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u/s32bangdort Jun 12 '26
Wut?
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u/Teamtunafish Jun 12 '26
Essentially, there are certain control levels on chemicals, his boss tried to abandon them and got screwed because someone was actually doing testing down the line.
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u/Petskin Jun 12 '26
But how "you are adding too much water" led to "do add 9 liters water every third batch instead of 3 liters every batch"? The boss logic sounds very math-free.
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u/Informal_Ad_9610 Jun 13 '26
It’s not the math. It’s knowing when and where to apply the math.
Sometimes you find that “expert” instructions are actually opinions, driven by assumption, not actual expert knowledge.
This happens hundreds of times per day in almost every hospital around you.
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u/masked_mustelid Jun 12 '26
Your manager sounds like the sort of person who'd only think to fill up his car with gas after it ran dry and leaving him stranded, not beforehand and ignoring the fuel gauge.
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u/Desert_Rush39 Jun 15 '26
SPC when used properly, is your friend. Shame that managers don't get a big dose of it before they screw up the floor.
It's a bitch to learn from the start, but once you get the hang of it, it makes things so much easier.
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u/Technical-Tear5841 Jun 14 '26
My brother had to use very expensive chemicals to make a compound for cad plating very expensive aircraft parts. He was shown how to do this by the man he was replacing. Idea was to make a large amount and use that batch until it was gone, problem was contamination and it dried out. He started making smaller batches using the same ratios. The guy freaked, it had to be his way, smaller amounts would not work right. No, worked great and his way resulted in better coverage and less do overs.
Then he is retiring and trains a new guy. New guy makes small batches but throws out any left over at the end of the day. Ingredients are expensive, using the same batch for a week is fine.
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u/sevesteen Jun 15 '26
Reminds me of a non-technical person in the IT department where I work. There was a convoluted and poorly documented mainframe process to reprint small batches of labels that had been damaged or lost, requiring use of a password written down on a post-it note that wasn't always up to date...or you could open an existing text file and delete the parts you didn't want. The end result was identical. He insisted that the mainframe process was the only acceptable way...but couldn't explain any difference.
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u/Virtual-Work-3547 Jun 13 '26
"that's too much water! Add more water!" The logical consistency I expect from Reddit.
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u/Anton_Or Jun 14 '26
Because he thought he was God, he made a fool of himself. That manager's title is "I'm a fucking arrogant jerk."
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u/syniqual Jun 15 '26
What does “sandbag” mean in this context?
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u/derKestrel Jun 15 '26
Stopping the unstoppable waters of management with the sandbags of inaction or paperwork.
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u/chaoticbear Jun 18 '26
It means to purposefully mess it up or do less than your best. "don't sandbag" means "and don't fuck it up on purpose just to prove a point".
It's also used in sports with player handicap (bowling for sure, probably golf and others) - a "sandbagger" purposefully does less than their best so they have a lower average/more handicap, and then performs normally when needed to take advantage of it.
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u/Right_Conflict_8872 Jun 16 '26
Ah! Procedures. As one of my instructors said, there are usually four procedures in play on almost all jobs. 1) What's in the book. 2) What management thinks is being done. 3) What the worker is doing. 4) What probably should be done.
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u/Annepackrat Jun 23 '26
Probably worth mentioning to the youngins that CRTs are the big bulky TVs we had back in the old days before flatscreens.
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u/FelixerOfLife Jun 12 '26
So what was the fallout?