Monday, May 10, 2010

At my office there's an "X days since last bad thing Y" sign on the first floor. There are three Ys, actually. The numbers are suitably high to be impressive; the top number is in the 20s right now, the middle number is around 340 and the bottom number is in the 60s. OK, cool, good work everyone, 340 and 60 days are indeed good lengths of time to go without letting those bad things happen. But in the time the sign has been up - I'd estimate six to eight months - I've noticed something funny: the numbers never go below 10 or even 15. The counter has reset one or another of the numbers at least three times. The one on top seems to be in the 20s fully half the days I walk by. And yet I never, ever see single digits.

So apparently it takes at least 10 days for word to reach HQ when these bad things happen, or for someone to get around to updating the numbers. Demonstrating this laxity is probably not the message they wanted the sign to send.

No comments: