Friday, May 29, 2009

Sense of perspective


I work at this factory where i am (theoretically) a software engineer and also responsible for managing energy efficiency. Today, the boss was out, so i decided to go and help out some of the factory technicians. Mingling with other people in the work place is, what i have come to believe, a good thing in the sense that we gain each other's trust and most important thing of all, i like to show them that we are all equally important members in the factory. Portuguese hierarchy in the work place is something i do not appreciate, mostly because there are few factory managers who really care about discussing employee’s ideas on improving the work place, or any other work related subject.Helping out factory technicians is really nice, they show me how to fix a certain machine and latter on, we talk about solving the problem, as equals. They complained a lot about excessive bureaucracy which leads to inefficiency at work. This is not uncommon, because as i had explained to them, i already had said the same thing to the factory manager and had made some proposals on how to improve the work environment and reduce the use of paper, to which he laughed and answered that working without paper is science fiction.Many portuguese people hate bureaucracy, but when it comes to the real thing, few are those who actually want to make a change.

This may have two possible explanations: Either a portuguese ancestor accidentally ate a piece of paper, liked it (a lot), and it stayed somewhat engraved in his genetic code, passing on from generation to generation to present days, or, portuguese have a somewhat suspicious nature about one another and require some form of paper certificate to prove you are telling them the truth.Consequence: excessive documentation and a bunch of useless information nobody will ever use or be capable of process.

No comments:

Post a Comment