RAILROAD SIGNALS of the U.S.

RANT #11
They Bought What?
or, Trying to save a buck by buying cheaper laptops

RAILFAN GUIDES HOME
RAILROAD SIGNALS HOME

Well, if ya'll have read any of my past rants about the workplace, you know I'm very opinionated when it comes to companies doing stupid sh1t.

Well, let's chalk another one up to the stupid a-holes that run the company.

A certain section in our company that has around 100 field people in it, and they needed new laptops.  Because of certain requirements, the laptops need a 9 pin serial port on them.

The bright Harvard educated financial types, in all of their infinite wisdom (and intimate knowledge of program requirements... yeah, right), told the programs people that it cost too much to by a laptop these days with a serial port built into it (since most serial stuff has gone the way of rotary telephone dials).

But wait, the program still has a need for a serial device.  So what do we do????

I know, we will buy every field service guy a USB to serial adapter.  Cool.  Now we can hook up the serial device to the computer like we did before.

But wait, I can't get anything out of the adapter, someone said, when they tried to run the service program.  What's not working?

Well, we find out two things wrong with this approach. 

-- First, the program running on the laptop is looking for a dedicated COMM 1 output port to send and receive data thru. 

-- Then, once they had someone figure out what to do, and then getting some software guy to write a script that turns a USB port into a serial port, we find out that ONLY ONE particular type of USB to serial adapter cable would work.

At first glance, it may not seem to bad an idea, but you need to factor in a couple of other things before you say that.

-- Someone had to order the adapters, after an engineer specified which ones to buy... so who knows how many hours the engineer spent on researching the problem, and then the purchasing people, sorry, logistics, had to order them.

-- Then, once they come in, they have to be inspected.  I've heard the number of $75 to have every item received by receiving, same for sending one item out.... you have a shipping/receiving guy and an inspector involved with stuff going in or out.

-- Then, once the adapters come in, they need to be sent out to each of the field people, at $75 plus whatever it costs us for someone in logistics to create a shipper for each and every item, so add another 25 bucks to each adapter, and we have roughly 100 bucks to send out each adapter, times 100 guys, that's $10,000, not counting the other incidental costs.....

Sounds to me like it would have been cheaper to but a laptop with a serial port in it!!!

Next time, a**holes, let them buy the laptop they need!!!

It just ain't right.

New 4AUG2011 
Last modified 28 Nov 2013