Your government at work — creating a cow fart tax.

My company is so awesome.  They just canned all four of the contractors in my department.

UPDATE:  It occurs to me that two of the four were let go 2.5 years ago and then brought back 3 months later.  Now that’s what I call foresight.

Nearly four years ago, I wrote this:

The company I work for has gone totally Zen. One of my tasks is to be the department liaison for changes to certain systems. Part of that involves a weekly meeting that reviews current changes.

Part of entering a change is to cite what impact (if any) this change will have to the customer (e.g. the server will be unavailable for 90 minutes). If there is no impact to the customer, one would think that it would suffice to put “none” in that field. One would be wrong. It was stated, “We want to see that you put some thought into [the impact field].”

They want to see that you put some thought into NOTHING !!!

Oh crud, my hair is bleeding again.

The person who handed down that edict — I’ll call her Dorothy — came on today’s call and reversed it.  BUT, she acted as though her reversal was always true, as though she had never said anything so asinine four years ago.  See also selective memory.

But wait, there’s more.

A couple weeks ago, Dorothy changed a couple other rules on us, and the chairperson of the call was abiding by those rule changes.  We noted to the chairperson that these rule changes made no sense whatsoever.  She agreed, but she was ham-strung by what Dorothy was making her do.

After a couple weeks of both the soul-sucking nature of following nonsensical rules, and the plummeting productivity that accompanied it, we stated that Dorothy had to attend the call this week, so that she could see what she had done.

Dorothy came to the meeting prepared and changed those rules back.  But she presented it as though this process — which we’ve been following for the last 5 years (until she messed it up 2 weeks ago) — was a new way of doing things.

My brain is totally going to melt before I can reach retirement age.

When a toddler wants the adult in front of him to pick him up, he raises his hands and arms.

When a soldier surrenders, he raises his hands and arms.

Jesus told us that, without childlike faith, we cannot see the kingdom.

We are also told that we need to surrender, to be totally dependent upon Christ.

Yet, both of these things, especially for a man, are counter-intuitive.  Society tells us that we’re not supposed to be reverting to childhood and that we’re supposed to be independent.

All of this got me wondering about praise, too.  Now, there’s no specific Scripture that says that we must raise our hands when we praise.  And for some people, it’s simply not within their nature to do so.

But I have to wonder, are there a lot of folks out there that don’t raise their hands, simply because it’s another reminder of childlike-ness and surrender?  Not that they even consciously think that, and come to the conclusion not to raise their hands.  But is there something in our natures that is resistant to it sub-consciously?