Post #179,418
10/15/04 12:11:21 PM
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PHBs in the comics
I don't know how many of you get the comic strip [link|http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/sforth/|Sally Forth], but it's been interesting lately.
One of the main characters, Sally's boss Ralph, is the epitome of a bad manager. He's not entirely stupid or evil like Dilbert's pointy-haired boss, but he's lazy and arrogant. He doesn't put much effort into thinking about his decisions or learning about his employees' work and the reasons for their opinions. All in all, Ralph is a realistic if somewhat exaggerated portrayal of a bad boss, not a cardboard cutout Dithers but a character with human motivations and significant lacks thereof.
Ralph just got fired by upper management.
It will be interesting to see where the comic goes with this, whether they just drop Ralph, keep him on as a minor friend character to show his personal side, or have something else planned.
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Post #179,445
10/15/04 4:45:07 PM
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Unfortunately, link does not work.
Get: Forbidden You don't have permission to access /features/comics/sforth/ on this server.
Apache/1.3.29 Server at www.kingfeatures.com Port 80 Must have to go through the right gate. I do see the strip in a tree version. But, it's only in the Sunday's Charlotte Observer.
Alex
In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet (1772-1834)
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Post #179,459
10/15/04 5:42:58 PM
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Link
[link|http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/sforth/about.htm|http://www.kingfeatu.../sforth/about.htm]
The Sig: "Despite the seemingly endless necessity for doing so, it's actually not possible to reverse-engineer intended invariants from staring at thousands of lines of code (not in C, and not in Python code either)." Tim Peters on python-dev
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Post #179,487
10/15/04 8:37:44 PM
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Ah.. someone else
Yes have been following - your description of 'Ralph' is al punte.
Found self looking for the Mon/Tues strips to see how the endless-Meeting results would arrive. As to the good/bad boss ratio out there - all of you would know vastly better than I can infer (we hear here and most places - mainly, the Horror).
What WILL It Take ... to put a sharpened balsa-wood stake through the Heart of The fucking 'Tie' .?. as a ridiculous anachronism now mainly symbolic of .. a throttling of nutrients to the brain.
(Ralph's suspenders + beer-gut.. well that's a whole anthro study)
(Gawd.. imagining Our Sally as management.. :(
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Post #179,499
10/15/04 10:10:13 PM
10/16/04 12:34:19 AM
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a perfunctory defense of neckties
Strictly speaking, I don't have to wear one at work—I'm a few years away from retirement; I've risen about as high as I'm going to in the organization, and as the in-house art department I rarely have to deal in person with folks outside the outfit—but I always have, even 20 years ago (before I landed the graphics gig) when I used to wear Levis to work, greatly to the irritation of my then-PHB. I outgrew the Levis (in more senses than one, alas), but it seems to me that the necktie serves two useful purposes: it serves as an acknowledgment by the wearer to whom it may concern that he serves within a dominance heirarchy and is prepared to abide by even its most arbitrary and pointless conventions, and the slight strangling sensation reminds this wearer, at any rate, that he's on hostile ground, and should not by word or deed betray to the heirarchy either resentment or contempt.
(Actually, I'm blessedly insulated from most of the office politics, regarded by the younger employees as a harmless eccentric and by management as a cross between a "computer whiz"—which I am obviously not remotely, but these are PHBs—and a court jester. Better a necktie than bells and motley, I always say)
cordially,
Cthulhu for President. Why vote for a lesser evil?
Edited by rcareaga
Oct. 16, 2004, 12:34:19 AM EDT
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Post #179,503
10/15/04 10:54:35 PM
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..well defended, Horatio
Ah.. seems akin to esoteric 'students' keeping a small rock, whatever in back pocket -- supposedly to remind one to try to Stay Awake. Except.. we get used to Anything, too soon.
Of course, with the brain supply reminding regularly of the small garotte -- OK, I see I'll have to pass this one on to the GRR for discrimination, and maybe a temp Green Card.
:-\ufffd
PS - if you have any Diebold tales able to be limned, I'd love to imagine that the first tap on the stake/heart was delivered by known cohort.
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Post #179,514
10/15/04 11:42:44 PM
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That's why I refer to it...
...as the "ol' throttling cloth".
Peter [link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire] [link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal] [link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
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Post #179,534
10/16/04 9:00:52 AM
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Interesting
I once similarly justified it as self-abuse to remind one of the alien environment. By 8:30 it was loosened and the collar open and the sleeves rolled up. Remove some top hair and add some beer gut, throw in size and kineticity - poof, it's near-authentic Lou Grant.
-drl
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Post #179,572
10/16/04 11:31:45 PM
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And the VP who fires him
is drawn to look 10 - 15 years younger, maybe even 20. Hey, no big deal: when you get old you're disposable and get thrown out with yesterday's trash. After all, youth knows everything!
lincoln "Windows XP has so many holes in its security that any reasonable user will conclude it was designed by the same German officer who created the prison compound in "Hogan's Heroes." - Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times [link|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net|contact me]
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