A compilation of strange stories in my office

Case #1

It was recently being noticed by our HR, that our electronic projector is missing. Our HR assistant Ms. Ajinomoto has been searching ups and downs for it, but found nothing.

We had some discussions with Ms. Ajinomoto while she was searching high and low, that the last time we seen the projector was during the global staff meeting in February.

The next day, Mr. Woodchild came into the office. The HR manager asked him to search, this time, Mr. Woodchild came to all of our desks and open our drawers without asking for permission. This is my conversation with Mr. Woodchild:

Woodchild came over to my desk while I was busy checking drawings, he pulled my drawer, and found that it is locked, "How come your drawer is locked?"
Me, "What are you doing?"
Woodchild, "I am doing spot check, for the missing projector."
Me jokingly said, "Do you have a search warrant?"
Woodchild, "Why do I need one? You don't allow me to check, it means you are hiding something."

I opened the drawer eventually, just so that he will go away and let me continue doing my work. He walked over to my colleague's desk, pulled the drawing while that colleague was on the phone.

Woodchild, "How come I can't open your drawer?"
colleague, "It is locked, of course you can't open it. What are you doing?"
Woodchild, "I want to spot check you all, to see if you have taken the projector."
colleague, "The projector had been missing for months, if I were to steal it, do you think I will keep it in the office until today?"
Woodchild, "Why you all like to lock your drawers one? Just open and let me check lah..."

This spot check had led to many unhappy voices behind the management. But no one raised it to the HR...

Case #2

Our logistics lady complained that she can't access to the www this morning. She came over to engineering department to ask around, our side has no problem on the connection. I went to her desk to check her connection and cable, no problem found.

She proceed to call Mr. Woodchild, Woodchild told her that it was our MD's instruction that no one should access to the internet. She was upset to hear this, as her jobs require her to track the shipment from the internet, and obviously it was only her computer that was having the problem.

When Mr. Woodchild come to the office, she challenged him to repeat what he said over the phone. Mr. Woodchild said, "It is P&C, I can't say it."

The logistic lady then questioned Woodchild for what she had done wrong to be banned from the internet. Woodchild ignored her, and stomped away. (I witnessed the whole process)

Later during the day, before lunch, HR manager came to us and asked all of us to gather in the meeting room for urgent announcement:

The MD announced that, the server in our China regional office is suffering from the load, mainly due to the colleagues in China are misusing the internet. Our MD decided to cut our access to the www, in order to be put into the "list of suspect", when the IT director from China takes the investigation.

To me, this can get back-fired. Anyway, I then asked when will we get back the connection to the www? He said, "It could be within a week, or forever, I don't know. "

Our MD carried on to say that our work doesn't require us to access the www very frequent, therefore a public computer, which can be used to access to the www, will be set up in a common area.

However, during the execution of the MD's announcement, Mr. Woodchild proceed to terminate all our connections, before set up the public computer. Therefore, a lot of our work are hanging in the middle.

For myself, I often use the internet to check up the design standards and codes, checking my spellings while writing letters, and browsing for vendors' catalogues. Now that we don't have the convinience, I have to think of other ways to get things done.

Case #3

Same day today, after the announcement of "No More WWW" was made, our HR sent our a memo, with the contents basically saying:

"You can't pack lunch to the office, for the whole of next week, because our VP will be visiting our office on Wednesday afternoon. So that our office will look clean and tidy."

"All files and folders should not be left on the table, so that your working area are not messy."

WTH? I didn't know packing lunch can make office dirty and messy, we have a pantry area anyway.

WTHx2? Our desks are small enough, we are doing real work here, papers always pile up faster than you can clear them, files and folders opened for reference. Our A3 drawing is already taking up the whole space! The closest filing cabinet is about 2m behind my desk. Do I have to go there and come back everytime I need a file?

Seriously, if I were the VP, I would ask those people who has clean desks during work, "Have you just reported to work today?"