Unsolved Mysteries (add to my miseries)

After cleaning the toilets and taking out the trash, I was called into the manager’s office at URS for my latest lesson in working for a directionless bureaucracy. The manager needed for me to read and sign a document. According to the manager I was doing something wrong at the register. Even though it pertained to me, I was not privy to get a copy of the actual document (company property) so I’m going to do my best to repeat the document the best to my recollection.

• Violation: I, Sik Nerd have been made aware that the expected scan rate of SRT is 90 percent. As per company policy, employees must compile 90 when TPS offsets the MRN scan rate. My ASR for the week of October 10th was not 90 percent SRT.
• Resolution: Follow the guidelines and comply with the expected SRT and ASR.
• Follow-up: 1 month

Those acronyms probably seem foreign to you* and you’re not alone: I didn’t know any of them. It wasn’t just the acronyms–I found the entire document incompressible. It could have been a recipe for sushi or the biological formula to make liquid hydrogen: in either case, I couldn’t tell the difference.

“So what does this all mean,” I asked the manager who gave me the document.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “The register keeps track of all your transaction, and when something is out of line it prints out that form for you to sign.” We then had a lengthy discussion trying to figure out what it meant. Did I need to be above or below that 90 percent rate? What the hell is an SRT (or TPS or MRN)? What did I need to do to correct this problem? Who really shot Mr. Burns?

Unfortunately, my manager knew the answer to none of these questions. The best we could determine was that I was not at 90 SRT and I needed to change that (although neither one of us knew how). On top of all that, the manager insisted it was no big deal and I wasn’t in trouble (oh no!–the last thing I’d want to do is lose my crappy job that barely pays minimum wage).

“If it’s no big deal, why do I have to sign it,” I asked.

“You just do,” he said matter-of-factly. “The computer printed it out, so you need to sign it and acknowledge you’re aware of the problem.”

“Which is what exactly?”

“Who knows? Who cares? Just sign it so we can move on.” With an honest answer like that, how could I resist?

To recap, I was reprimanded automatically from a computer for reason unknown to me and everyone else who works in the store. I swore to correct the problem that no one knew how to solve on a document that likely would end up in a dumpster within a few months. To an intelligent, questioning person it might seem kinda odd–but that’s just how things roll at URS.

^{* If they’re not foreign to you, can you tell me what they mean? Did I just sign over my first-born child to become a test subject to an evil, multination conglomerate?}