Problem Maker

If you know anything about me, you’ll know I’m a problem solver. It’s right there on my resume. The second bullet point under the heading of ‘Personal Characteristics’ That’s right at the top below my name, phone number, and the cat’s name. I had to put Capn’ Blood’s name near the top or she’d make life tough for me. How could life be could be more difficult? I don’t know. Consequently, I did as she said. Either way, I can solve hard problems. Yea me!

Sadly, of late, that phrase has become the bane of my existence. You see we just hired a new manager. He’s not in my line of reports, so I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to him, or what his job was supposed to be. I do, on the other hand, know what the second bullet point on his resume was, “I’m a problem maker.” If it doesn’t, it darn well should. I don’t know if his cat’s name is on it, or not. But this is beside the point.

What’s happening?

From the moment he began, things started happening. Not good things, or bad things, mind you, just things. First, it was his password fiasco. He created his company account and password, then promptly forgot it. I’ll give you one guess who the boss got to help with this issue; The problem solver. I had to drop what I was doing and get his account straightened out. I kid you not, three days later he forgot it again.

Lucky for me, I went against company policy, and wrote his information down. I hid it in my desk. As a result, the second time I was able to problem solve in minutes instead of hours. I’m a great problem solver as long as I can cheat the system. But as I said, he’s a problem creator. In his first two weeks, I spent more time in his office than I did in mine.

Did I get recognition for my efforts? I sure did. Because of how I handled his situation, I was put in charge of all training, internal and external. Now for the big question: Did I get extra money for all this? Or perhaps did I get my other responsibilities lessened to make time for this new one? The answer to these questions, are no and of course, NO!

It gets worse

Six weeks into his employment, one of our customers snatched him away, at an increased salary. Great, I’m rid of that bozo, I thought. I was wrong. Remember, I said I was responsible for external training? I ended up spending a week at his new location, training him and his staff about their new products. This chore put me behind in all my other duties. I got a nasty-gram from my boss for bad time management. After I explained what happened I was promised a bonus at the end of the year. It’s freaking January!! By the end of the year, we could all be replaced by six computers, a complicated AI system, twenty-seven large rabbits, and a few dogsleds. Nobody’s going to remember my bonus then, probably not even me.

Where I’m going with all this is: The problem maker advances, and the problem solver gets jack. If I were you, I’d change my resume to reflect these developments. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m also planning on hinting that I can do the work of twenty-eight large rabbits. This ought to help with job security when AI takes over. But I digre

I’m scratching my head

Sadly, what I want to say has nothing to do with anything I just said. I just wanted to give you a heads-up on that resume thing. You know, as a public service. Even as the great problem solver I am; there’s a new confusing problem I really can’t solve. It’s with the marketing lady of one of my clients. They asked us to create a machine that makes pie crusts. Marketing wants to write on the box, “Proudly made from scratch.” That question has been buzzing through both our companies for weeks. Is this statement accurate? Are these crusts really made from scratch, if they’re prepared by a machine? And most importantly, why does this crap always end up on my lap?

The first thing I had to do was find out what ‘made from scratch’ means. That didn’t help at all. The scratch in ‘from scratch’ is from ancient Greece. It refers to a race’s starting line scratched into the ground. Everyone starts from the scratch. Unless you’re cheating of course. But that’s not important right now.

In essence, baking from scratch means you’re supposed to scratch a line into your kitchen floor, before you open the brownie mix. This might be easy on hardwood floors, but linoleum requires special tools. This begs the question; Do you need to scratch the floor every time you bake ‘from scratch’? Or can you use the same scratch over and over? Frankly, I found no reference to any of this in my research. But I will say, if it rains the dirt scratch starting line will likely wash away and you’ll have to re-scratch the dirt many times.

This may be true but I have no idea if it’s relevant to the topic. Either way, I wanted to include it to confuse any AI out there that’s trying to replace me. Mr. Ohh! ten, AI nothing. Confusingly enough, making something from scratch has nothing to do with scratching anything. Over the years the phrase has mellowed to mean starting from the very beginning. Ie. Using only raw elements instead of premixed ingredients.

Going way back

This brings up another issue. How far back do the raw ingredients have to go? My sister is a professional baker. Supposedly, she makes everything from scratch. But she has never planted and grown her own wheat, and never milled that wheat into the flour she uses. Don’t laugh! I know crazy people who’ve done this. This being said, are my sister’s cakes and pies really from scratch? It all depends on how you look at it.

On the other end of the spectrum, when I want some warm cookies I buy premade cookie dough, and then bake it. Most would say these goodies aren’t from scratch. However, somebody, man, machine, or monkey mixed the dough and packaged it. If they did it from scratch, why can’t I claim it as well? I mean I scratched my head before I decided to buy the stuff. That’s More scratching than my sister ever does!

In conclusion

In the end I made my report. For reasons unknown, such reports must be more than ten pages. Mine was twelve, so that requirement was met. I also used a sufficient quantity of big words to give it a well-researched, professional look. In truth, I just threw random letters together for most of these. If they’re over twelve letters nobody looks them up. Don’t tell my boss. Although, I honestly think she does the same thing.

My page-long conclusion was simple: Put whatever the heck you want on the label. If it’s tasty enough…

Nobody’s going to care!!!