No Joke
For the last hour my boss and the rotund, Christian payroll controller have been interrogating a nearby coworker about paperwork.
Paperwork, it appears, is a dangerous and slippery slope in the world of ISO standards. If any member of our company decides to use a piece of paper in his or her work area it must either be labeled as an official document and must display the most recent update date or version number or revision number; or it must be signed and dated by the workers immediate supervisor.
Apparently, in this company, Supervision is code for ‘Upholder of ISO Standards’ and has very little to do with actually being aware of even having subordinates, let alone being aware of what they do – other than using the correct version of a piece of paper.
The enforcers have taken a break for lunch and as the sausage-panted payroll gal disappears around the corner my lanky and neurotic boss returns partly to commiserate about the inquisition, partly to ensure those who were not eavesdropping then are now.
And I continue gorging myself on reheated frozen pizza - because I have nothing better to do.
The pair will be back. They are warming up for the crusades of superior documentation skills visited upon us by an outside, presumably more objective, standard enforcement group. This is only the beginning, you see. Two weeks from now our company will be subject to an external ISO audit. Typically this is done internally once a year and externally every five years.
In my 10 years of telephone-based office work I have never once encountered the term ‘ISO Certified Company’. Yet this company is convinced the certification is the benchmark of quality business standards. Odd indeed.
All of this forces me to wonder – what is the point? It seems the cost of devising, revising and ensuring these standards is grossly over-inflated given that no one I know has ever heard of such standard adherence.
Fortunately I have today’s crossword puzzle hidden under piles of re-revised forms and documents with dates ranging from 1996 to now. People bring me paper. They deliver it as some sort of shortcut, some coveted secret video game cheat. Here is the answer to all life’s questions. Please make sure you put this with the rest of your documents. No, there is no organization to them. Use what you need, recycle the rest. But please do not display anything out of date or unsigned. We don’t care where you put it really, just not in sight of auditors, internal or otherwise.
I do question what a bigger waste of money is; spending numerous hours enforcing irrelevant documentation and procedural standards, or employing me to verbally berate undereducated men for being illiterate and unreasonable.
But for now I get paid, the bosses stay busy with their standards and customers have mommy to help them build the wall.
Paperwork, it appears, is a dangerous and slippery slope in the world of ISO standards. If any member of our company decides to use a piece of paper in his or her work area it must either be labeled as an official document and must display the most recent update date or version number or revision number; or it must be signed and dated by the workers immediate supervisor.
Apparently, in this company, Supervision is code for ‘Upholder of ISO Standards’ and has very little to do with actually being aware of even having subordinates, let alone being aware of what they do – other than using the correct version of a piece of paper.
The enforcers have taken a break for lunch and as the sausage-panted payroll gal disappears around the corner my lanky and neurotic boss returns partly to commiserate about the inquisition, partly to ensure those who were not eavesdropping then are now.
And I continue gorging myself on reheated frozen pizza - because I have nothing better to do.
The pair will be back. They are warming up for the crusades of superior documentation skills visited upon us by an outside, presumably more objective, standard enforcement group. This is only the beginning, you see. Two weeks from now our company will be subject to an external ISO audit. Typically this is done internally once a year and externally every five years.
In my 10 years of telephone-based office work I have never once encountered the term ‘ISO Certified Company’. Yet this company is convinced the certification is the benchmark of quality business standards. Odd indeed.
All of this forces me to wonder – what is the point? It seems the cost of devising, revising and ensuring these standards is grossly over-inflated given that no one I know has ever heard of such standard adherence.
Fortunately I have today’s crossword puzzle hidden under piles of re-revised forms and documents with dates ranging from 1996 to now. People bring me paper. They deliver it as some sort of shortcut, some coveted secret video game cheat. Here is the answer to all life’s questions. Please make sure you put this with the rest of your documents. No, there is no organization to them. Use what you need, recycle the rest. But please do not display anything out of date or unsigned. We don’t care where you put it really, just not in sight of auditors, internal or otherwise.
I do question what a bigger waste of money is; spending numerous hours enforcing irrelevant documentation and procedural standards, or employing me to verbally berate undereducated men for being illiterate and unreasonable.
But for now I get paid, the bosses stay busy with their standards and customers have mommy to help them build the wall.
posted by tethys at 6:19 PM
1 comments
