It’s All Your Fault!

Here at Quality Digest, we get a lot of mail: Some of it’s critical, some of it’s praiseworthy, some of it’s cantankerous, and some of it’s challenging. All of it is insightful. And then, every once in awhile, something comes along that simply... well...

The following was sent to us from a reader who shall go nameless, for obvious reasons. It is reputed to be a note from said reader’s boss, a kind and caring sort for whom, obviously, there is no “I” in “blame.” We cannot vouch for the note’s veracity, but can tell you that it was written in shiny gold crayon and adorned with butterflies, flowers, sunbeams, and little “I heart you” signs.

Judge for yourself.

Dear Quality Worker Bee:

So here we are again… coming up on the end of another lousy year. What the heck happened? Remember 12 months ago, when you made that presentation to me and the board about how you were going to revamp our quality systems and drive improvement through the culture of the organization? Don’t give me any of this “management support” stuff, either… we gave you five whole minutes on the agenda to make your case, and most of us listened kind of attentively, even though I personally had to pee really bad. And what did we get for our efforts? Sheesh, we’ve had MORE defects, MORE rejected shipments, and MORE inventory backlog this year than last.

I don’t think that you’ve shown the proper appreciation for how lucky you are to have a job in this economy. Hey, we did you a favor by laying off all your colleagues and support staff and consolidating their jobs into yours. We CHOSE to keep you, remember that, and this is how you repay us? By leaving the office at 7 p.m. and only working every other weekend? What’s the matter with you? For crying out loud, don’t you realize that for you, every day is a half-day? (12 hours… that’s half a day, right?)

This is a great opportunity to demonstrate your resiliency, your flexibility, and your dedication to the company. Sure, there’s been a freeze on raises and a slow but steady reduction in benefits over the past year or two, but things could be worse. Your job could be outsourced to some guy named “Pete” over in India. Or the whole factory could up and move to China, where nobody cares about emissions, or sustainability, or unions. Now THERE’S a group of workers who appreciate any meager benefit that management deigns to toss their way. For $10 a day, how can you go wrong?

I know what you’re thinking: Deming says different, it’s not the workers who are the problem, management is to blame, blah, blah, blah. Well, red beads, schmed beads as far as I’m concerned… everyone knows that if the quality of our stuff is messed up, it’s all your fault. Heck, you’re the quality guy, aren’t you? Just fix it… do one of those RCAPA thingies and figure it out. Nobody cares how.

Oh, by the way, don’t mess with our core production processes. They’re just fine, thank you… I should know, because I designed most of them myself just 15 or 20 years ago. It’s not like the manufacturing world’s changed during that period of time, right?

For example: Last month you complained to me about how our nonconforming products needed to be better separated, because those idiots in shipping (again) sent stuff to the customer that never should have left the floor. How does that happen? Geez, the process couldn’t be any simpler: When a batch is rejected, you just move it someplace on the dock  where there’s some room, place a little sticky note saying “don’t ship” on it, and then report back to me so I can alert the shipping manager (when I remember). Clear as mud, no? But you want to waste your time redesigning a perfectly good process like that. And you wonder why nobody likes quality people… you’re always blaming someone else for your own shortcomings.

Whatever happened to taking personal accountability, anyway!?!? You’ve really got to work on that.

Let’s touch base on this again when I get back from my cruise next month.

Sincerely,

The Boss

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