July 14, 2022: Reader Tips

Reader Tips 89 Comments

This video rant by Megyn Kelly illustrates several things:

  • Whether it’s government or big business, we are living in the Age of Incompetence.
  • Businesses, especially airlines it seems, are drastically understaffed.
  • Many “managers”, be they in business, the government, or the military, seem to take unaccountability to entirely new heights.

Feel free to share recent stories about your own frustrations with incompetence.  News tips would be cool too.

89 Replies to “July 14, 2022: Reader Tips”

  1. When I started my first post-B. Sc. job just over 45 years ago, I believed that one advanced in the hierarchy by being good at what one was doing. My being the son of two tradesmen, who learned their respective crafts through the old European system, was the basis for that. The masters under which my parents were apprentices had those positions by virtue of training and years of experience at plying their trades.

    It quickly became apparent to me that it wasn’t necessarily the case. Most of my bosses got their promotions not through aptitude in their respective disciplines but by being skilled at office politics and dispensing copious amounts of blarney.

    Often, I found that I was smarter and more adept than they were and that often got me into trouble. I often forgot the two basic rules of any workplace:

    1. The boss is always right.
    2. When the boss is wrong, see Rule #1.

    1. I totally relate to your dilemma.
      Even commonsense was tossed to the curb.
      If your brighter than your boss, it didn’t take long to get marked.
      Others taking credit for your innovation and if the boss praised that other individual, it didn’t take long for him to realize what a fool he looked like by other workers.
      A multitude of different types of challenges seemed to come my way that was beyond the norm.
      Leadership should be earned but our society is set that the most corrupted seems to run this gin joint.

      I just coast along and have shelved my talents as many are deemed illegal by safety laws or need government certificates.

  2. Another high-resolution version of a Webb telescope photo:

    https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220714.html

    Note the two galaxies at the 9:30 position. The one further out from the centre of the nebula is seen edge-on and the one a bit closer displays a nice spiral formation.

    If you look close at the outer galaxy, there’s a faint band across the centre. My guess is that it’s dust and that’s one place where new stars would form.

    1. If you look around the periphery of the nebular cloud, as well as in the background, you’ll see lots more galaxies.

  3. Way too long; did not watch. When I realised that I’m watching on the off chance that there’s a boob slip during some emphatic hand gesture, I clicked away. Did she eventually get to her point? Was there a boob slip? If someone could post the time for either event, that would be great.

    1. No boobage malfunction … but she did say fkcu! … with them purdy lips of’en hers

      BTW … I never expected our AI future would make us yearn for the hours of conversation with ‘John Wayne’ in Mumbai.

  4. Businesses may be drastically understaffed, but government is drastically overstaffed. In my experience, that is the reason that businesses are understaffed. I estimate that 50% of my daily work activities in manufacturing and logistics were devoted exclusively to regulatory compliance of some sort.

    1. Could not agree more. I work in the technology end of manufacturing in the food/pharma areas and see a lot of effort expended on “compliance”.

      The latest time/resource suck in food is “sustainability”. All kinds of sourcing rules, tracking, and other stuff.

      Whatever happened to making stuff efficiently and safely?

  5. Competence is not the norm. Competence looks like excellence these days. Idiocracy.

  6. 6Many places in Calgary are understaffed.

    Recently, when shutting the garage door here at home, late in the (business) day, it suddenly got stuck, became askew, and wouldn’t budge more than a few inches.

    I immediately called about 10 places and finally a Commercial Professional agreed to come within the hour provided I pay overtime fees. (In fact, I was lucky to have reached anyone, ‘pay the price’ is usually my motto, when that happens) In Calgary if you wait too long, for anything, it’s gone the next day. In this case, I’d have waited for at least several days to weeks for service. Agreeing to their price was worth the peace of mind. (It was a thin wire that wore out)

      1. We reported street light outage by voice call to 311, and then by email to our councillor and the mayor in May. Found out Enmax has a web app showing outage details. The 3 of 4 lights out had been tagged in February. Lights fixed end of June.

        1. That doesn’t surprise me. They’re slow to provide service in cold weather.

  7. I work in the mining industry. In my experience in several companies, for most of them advancement to corporate management over the past 10 years has been based on points from the following categories: how much boss worship in public you can achieve, how female one is, being young but loud and vocal, being “ethnic”, being QWERTY+, complying visually and loudly with latest fad from the Toronto cultural elite. Screw competency for the position.

    Seeing career commited and skilled veteran engineers and scientists bossed around by a 30 year old award winning “manager” and virtue signaller from Toronto is enough cringe for a lifetime.

    Then they wonder why they struggle to be profitable despite record breaking metal prices.

    1. Seeing career commited and skilled veteran engineers and scientists bossed around by a 30 year old award winning “manager” and virtue signaller from Toronto is enough cringe for a lifetime.

      Any bets that the aforementioned manager won’t take responsibility for any idiotic decisions?

      It’s like what happened to me at an outfit I worked at 40 years ago. We were having difficulties with a certain computer program we were using and I pointed it out to my superiors. It got so bad that I suggested that the company send me to the firm that hosted that software and get it working from there, figuring that it would be cheaper that way than to keep things the way they were.

      Unfortunately, I was proven right and there were still problems later on. I mentioned that to the department chief when he decided to give me a good scolding. He claimed that it was really my fault because I didn’t try hard enough to convince my bosses.

      I was fired a few months later, probably because there was a new company president and that department chief wanted to be rid of me lest I embarrass him.

    1. Finally, someone speaks the truth! I’m not entirely sure what it means, but I’m onside.

    1. Twitter is down.
      Scrambling to get rid of bots??
      Saw a great expose of twit bots last night (sry…should have linked):
      Three seperate accounts with ‘high profile’ professions, different name, same profile picture.

    2. FreeMan – I saw that Tweet from Elon Musk this morning: “Hunter Biden every time he buys crack and hookers”. It’s awesome but Elon is making big enemies. Power trumps money.

  13. Re Megan’s rant

    The Belgian airline was SABENA

    Reckoned to stand for “Such A Bloody Experience – Never Again”

    1. I first saw it more than 40 years ago and I remember it was quite popular at the time, largely because of its catchy theme.

      It was a film that featured a cast which had actors who were largely unknown outside of the U. K. unless one happened to watch British TV shows, such as those often shown on PBS. The exception to that would have been Ian Holm as Abrahams’s trainer.

      The soundtrack’s composer, Vangelis, wrote music for a number of movies, particularly documentaries, well before this one and had a number of LPs to his credit.

      But this was, perhaps, the film that brought him to the attention of North American audiences. Among his credits were the soundtracks for Missing (with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek), 1492: Conquest of Paradise (Gerard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver), The Bounty (Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins), and Blade Runner (Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, and Sean Young).

      1. Vangelis also made a number of recordings with Jon Anderson, lead singer for Yes. Their collaboration was known as “Jon and Vangelis” and, perhaps, their best-known recording was The Friends of Mr. Cairo.

        1. Did anyone notice Vangelis passed a few months back? Jon and Vangelis are frequent on my rotation.
          On this incompetence stuff, if you never watched Steve Bannon’s Generation Zero, this was all predicted.
          One other observation, I live on the rim of the mostly densely populated area of Canada and noted that this past July 1st, I saw the least amount of patriotic flag waving as far as I can remember. Used to see hundreds of people would fly flags from their cars, makeshift home flag flying and red and white attire. Only attire I saw was in a bank, however there were zero flags in that bank.

          1. Proof that the elites’ plans to divide us are working.

            CBC and it’s cultist listeners whine that the Trucker Convoy’s use of the flag ruined it for them… LOL… bunch of frigging snowflakes, and we all know how little pride we conservatives have in today’s ruined Canada.

          2. Did anyone notice Vangelis passed a few months back?

            I must confess that until I read the article that AI referred to, I wasn’t aware that he had died.

  17. For a period of about two years my bags were lost on 10 consecutive trips, either on the way there or the way back. Fortunately, I always got them back. However, the baggage claim experience has always been the way described by Megan. This is nothing new. You cannot call them and you can only wait.

    Now I am always extremely nervous at the baggage carousel.

    One time, I was returning from a following trip to the same airport a couple weeks after my bags were lost, so I popped over to the baggage claim office and saw my bags from the previous trip. The employee was surprised because they had not called to tell me the bags were there yet.

  20. CO
    ” CBC and it’s cultist listeners whine that the Trucker Convoy’s use of the flag ruined it for them…”
    Is it that or are people disgusted with Canada? CBC types would put up a Pride flag before the Canadian, I think people are disgusted but are quiet about it, which is very Canadian.
    BA
    https://gettr.com/post/p1akvspba64

    1. Personally, I am getting sick of people whining about the Trucker Convoy. For many of us, they were a welcome ray of hope after being oppressed for two years. Now we have endless ” investigations” and excessive posturing (City of Ottawa Audit, some other civil rights zealots holding an enquiry, the oppressive handling of Canada Day by Ottawa Police, and complaints about the issue of the flag. All they seem to be able to come up with is horn honking as an indicator of how traumatizing this was. Geez, they are going after police with sledge hammers in Holland. Canadians need to grow up. The intolerance is destroying our social fabric.

      1. “Canadians need to grow up. The intolerance is destroying our social fabric.”

        The poll released today on how the majority of Canadians now believe that Trudeau is “divisive” gives me hope.

        (not a lot, but some…)

  23. Health Canada approved the Moderna jabs for the wee kiddos today. It’s 37% effective in preventing symptoms for kids 2-5. Not a typo. Thirty-seven. Yet it got approved anyway. God only knows what the true side effect risks are of jabbing such young children, but of course we’ll never hear about those in the Great Vaccine White North. Safe and Effective!

    Health Canada is nothing more than an FDA flunkie these days, not to mention a vaccine junkie.

    1. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/health-canada-moderna-kids-vaccine-approval-1.6520320

      These parents were salivating for this anyways. There was a story of a pediatrician giving shots to children at parent’s request several months back. It was his moral duty.

      I should be more outraged, but that tank is long empty. In reality, the spawn of the believers were just going to be a drain of resources in the future. If it takes truckloads of tiny corpses to wake up a few more, then so be it. I’m actually happy the shot is here for them.

      Again, parents were DEMANDING THIS.

      1. Oh, I’m aware of that. That’s part of the true reason they approved the jabs in the States, too. Some number of hypochondriac parents desperate to jab their little kids. Fortunately so far the uptake down there has been very low. Canada’s will be higher, because this country is filled with cowards and idiots.

        The rest of the reason is that Big Pharma absolutely requires CDC to add the jabs to the childhood immunization schedule. Once that happens, and it will, because corruption, Big Pharma gets permanent immunity from liability.

        1. I’m pretty sure fraud eliminates the immunity from liability. There will be calls for blood eventually. Even amongst the jab addicts…

          I’m still surprised Ontario has admitted that there is a risk of myocarditis with the next booster. Progress.

          1. “I’m pretty sure fraud eliminates the immunity from liability. There will be calls for blood eventually. Even amongst the jab addicts…”

            It’s inevitable, really. They can’t hide the facts forever, even with the government in their pocket and the MSM on their side.

            “I’m still surprised Ontario has admitted that there is a risk of myocarditis with the next booster. Progress.”

            Yeah, and that “one in 5000” is only the number that they *admit* to… the real number will be considerably higher.

      2. Stateless, If the parents are salivating for their 2 and 3 year old children to get the vaccine, then it a perfect example of Darwin’s theory of evolution, Low IQ parents don’t survive the gene pool. Sad, but you have to wonder.

    1. Gee, I wonder what ethnicities are principally responsible for this.
      Gee, I wonder what income brackets are principally responsible for this.
      Gee, I wonder what religions are principally responsible for this.
      Gee, I wonder what languages are principally responsible for this.
      Gee, I wonder what sex is principally responsible for this.

      The question you should asking yourself, is “Is it right-handed people or left-handed people that are principally responsible for this?”

    1. So, when there’s a cricket pizza, will the food deliver itself?

        1. I can imagine pancakes made from cricket flour flipping themselves……

  30. WEFer Quits.
    Italian PM Mario Draghi has resigned according to Reuters, RadioGenova. Draghi quit after a political party in his ruling coalition refused to participate in a confidence vote earlier today.

    2. Update from Italy.

      Italian President Sergio Mattarella refuses to accept Mario Draghi’s resignation and invites Draghi to adddress parliament.

    2. One reason the Air India bombing was never solved was because of a “lack” of evidence. In fact, the wreckage is located off the Irish Atlantic coast and was too deep to allow proper investigation.

    3. The Punjab strikes back.

      Wonder if jaggy singh was ‘home’ in his Burnaby riding?

      The Air India bombing was 1985. Revenge is best served cold.

  34. Sounds like Canada.

    “An explosive new analysis published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity reveals that Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has very few business-oriented officials in the administration and that the vast majority of people handling economic policy for the United States government under Biden have no business experience whatsoever.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/07/13/exclusive-ship-of-fools-62-percent-of-biden-officials-who-handle-economic-policy-have-zero-years-business-experience/

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