Walk in Laughing

Today was a watershed moment for me at work. First let me share a little about how I arrived at this moment...

The day started off normal enough. Orders, always orders in my inbox. I was gradually placing all the orders and actually getting somewhat ahead when news came that, from now on, my co-worker and I would have to place all the special orders coming on a stock order instead of giving them to the people in Purchasing. Why? Because they want to "take Purchasing out of the loop." Now does that make sense to anyone? For sure not to me! Why would you make someone else place a special order on a stock order other than the people that place the stock orders?? Now we have additional work to add to our already growing stockpile. Not only do we have more orders to place, we also have extra steps because some vendors don't have stock orders every week and we have to keep up with the orders until there is a regular stock order. In addition, some vendors require a "hard" copy of the PO which means more walking back and forth to the scanner.

After that revelation, more small irritants piled upon each other until the reached a climax when I was told to order a part from a specific line for a customer when I was just told by someone else that we no longer order from that vendor because it's not company approved. Why in the world would we tell the customer the line was no good and then turn around and order the part? It makes no sense!! That incident was the proverbial straw on the camel's back. I had had it with all the wishy-washiness in the name of "customer service".

So I decided one thing right then and there...

No matter what the powers-that-be living in the ivory towers may say or do...

No matter that they only see the "grand view" and leave the intricate details to us little people...

No matter that they think this new system will streamline the process for the whole company but in reality only shifts the clumsiness down the line to us...

No matter the whole absurdity of it all...

Kevin will walk in laughing.




After all, it's better to laugh than cry.