The Backstabber

There's a manager in our department I refer to as The Backstabber. He's a real piece of work, that one. In order to keep climbing upwards on the corporate ladder the Backstabber tells his superiors whatever he thinks they want to hear and when things don't work out like he said they would, he finds a way to place the blame on his peers or subordinates. Sometimes both. Recently he sabotaged a personal friend who also is in management here by going to his boss and cooking up a bunch of bogus dirt about the guy. Unfortunately the boss man bought Backstabber's garbage and demoted that other manager back to being a line technician. I was disgusted when I found out what happened especially since the Backstabber frequently invited the other guy and his family over to his house for dinner.

Dog Boards are something we constantly struggle with in the test area. A Dog Board is a failed circuit board. Usually technicians are so buried in instruments that they don't have much time to troubleshoot boards down to the component level. When an instrument fails in test the guys isolate it down to a microcircuit or PC board, swap it out, and get the box back to test as quickly as possible. Because there is a significant dollar value on each dog board we hang onto them with the idea of troubleshooting them later on to save them from the scrap bins. Over time those dog board piles start to overflow. They're still considered usable inventory though and they have to be counted just like brand new PC boards. So, eventually hardly any brand new boards are delivered to the product line from stores and techs are forced to repair as many dog boards as possible.

It's a constant juggling act between making monthly shipments on time and reducing inventory by fixing those dog boards. Backstabber had one of our supervisors fired over this dog board stuff. He was told by his bosses to get the dog board inventory under control immediately. Being the yes man that he is, Backstabber said no problem. He then delegated the responsibility to a peer, told her she would have all the necessary technical resources to make it happen, and then pulled the rug right out from under her. He pulled the techs away from repairing boards and kept them focused on instruments for a few months. As a result she couldn't get the dog board job done in time. When upper management came back on Backstabber and asked why the dog board inventory hadn't been effectively reduced he pointed at the other supervisor he promised to help and said, "It's her fault." Without questioning the Backstabber's story, they fired her.

Everyone here thought that was totally fucked up.

Now I have a problem. Even though I'm stuck back here in the lab cleaning up after Greasy Guy all the time, Backstabber hit me up for a new batch of instrument test racks. He wants more stations built up yesterday and like a bad re-run of syndicated television he's not willing to spend any cash to buy the equipment I need to put these racks together. Looks like I'm going to have to go into Super Scrounge mode again. The thing that bothers me though is I don't trust this bastard at all. I'm going to have to watch him like a hawk to make sure he doesn't try to burn me somehow.