For the last ten days a bunch of consultant/audit gnomes has been sitting on our floor. They're locked up in a big conference room and it seems that they even sleep here. It's crazy. Even if you get here at 0745 and leave after 0800, they're here. They're always here. Luckily I saw that meeting room empty the first week I was here, so I know that they're not always here, but it's impressive. The smell coming out of that room fits no description: it's the stench of gnomes being pushed on harder and harder by their seniors ("partners").... Whoew, they're hunched over their portable computers, running around like madman and racing eachother to the fax, copy and printing machines, because they all want to make good impressions, they wanna "score". All they do all day long, is type numbers into spreadsheats/spreadCHEATS, who do some calculations and math on that input. The gnomes then analyze the results, and interpret them with majestic appreciation: oh they made more than 25% more profits this quarter: IMPOSSIBLE... So they go over the numbers once more, typing like madman, and then they change some parameters in their godlike equations; until... the story fits, the results are within acceptable ranges, and everybody's happy. At the end: you've got a trade of service: the company now has an officially signed certificate by a so called independant auditor that everything was done "by the book", the consulting/Auditing firms strikes the bull's eye ammassing FEES and FAME for providing the EXCUSE, the poor consulting gnomes hit a big bonus at the end of the year. But nothin really happened... Nothing was produced really,... Well, yeah, a lot of paper was consumed, print cartridges and computer time, not counting man hours, electricity, coke and cigarettes. All that resulting in a defiant declaration that everything is A O.K. And you can be damn well sure that the taxman doesn't have the resources to go over all these magical calculations, let alone the judicial system.
Funny how the world goes around...
Come to think of it... What did I produce today? Or what did I consume?
Troubling question for a neophyte worker - bee...
