PE1

I'm ready for my promotion, Mr. Bossman. Hit me.

I'm now a certified professional engineer. I have informed human resources and they have added me to the promotions list. I have even re-written my Position Description Questionnaire (a.k.a. PDQ), which is your damn job but --for the sake of speed and quality-- I did it myself. Yeah, I don't have a lot of faith in your abilities or convictions, Mr. Bossman. Don't act surprised; we both know you suck. My promotion is my priority and I get the crystalline vibe that you don't give a rat's ass because it doesn't affect you… not that I expect different.

Thx

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I re-wrote my PDQ. I thought I did a damn fine job making my position sound necessary and important. Thought. I forwarded my PDQ to a coworker who speaks fluent upper-managementish (derived from ancient gibberish and modern buzzwordish) and she performed some amazing PDQ-kungfu. What were once succinct sentences are now convoluted double run-ons that lose all meaning in a syntactic maze of commas and buzzwords. I do nothing, yet I have paragraph after paragraph of twisting, coiling, snaking multi-syllabic words that weave an illusion of work. Example:

This position uses formulative judgment to evaluate the relevance of Pavement Management theories, and applies engineering principles to expand the sophistication of, and tailor the principles of, the Pavement Management System’s analysis and reporting methodologies at network and project levels.

Holy crap, there are four "and's" in there that totally fuck with me. This is like three sentences merged in to one mutant monster sentence that might one day climb out of the deep blue ocean to wreck havoc on Tokyo and grab a bite to eat at the closest Waffle House, which is probably the Waffle House off of Peach Tree Blvd in downtown Atlanta, GA. Boil off all the contaminated condensation and that sentence simply implies that I analyze stuff, though it really doesn't say how or what.

Utilize specialized pavement management computer software to determine highway surface condition deficiencies and provide supporting analysis, judgement, and resoursefulness for recommendations related to pavement engineering to allocate resources accordingly by funding category and/or geographical area.

Basically, this says the same thing as the other sentence. It even repeats some key buzzwords.

Evaluate the relevance of the Pavement Management model concepts to formulate the need for reevaluating the models.

This sentence may be short, but it's still comical. Looking past the filler words, this sentence says, "Evaluate the relevance of the models to determine if the models need to be reevaluated". Shorter still, "Evaluate to see if shit should be reevaluated." This creates a bizarre logic loop.

• I have evaluated the models and determined that they need to be reevaluated.
• I have reevaluated the models and determined that they need to be re-reevaluate.
• I have re-reevaluated the models and determined that they need to be re-re-reevaluated.
• I have re_∞-1-reevaluated the models and determined that they need to be re_∞-reevaluated.

I can do that for the next 25-years. Easy.

The sad part is that us subordinates see right through this b.s., but upper-management is so totally enamored with this diarrheic explosion of words, fragments, phrases, and clauses. And, those are the people in charge of my promotion.

I'm scared.
...and so it was written, shenry at 7/28/2004 08:45:00 AM.
...and so it was appended with .