Text 48020, 111 rader
Skriven 2007-02-02 16:08:41 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 48014 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: FidoNews 24:05 [02/05]: General Articles
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02 Feb 07 17:26, Michiel van der Vlist wrote to Roy Witt:

 RW>>>> Ahhh, your first mistake.
 MvdV>>> If that was anyone's mistake it was my boss'es. No, my mistake
 MvdV>>> was not walking away from that job when I still could...
 RW>> Many people do the same thing. They're hoping against hope that the
 RW>> company will survive and don't see the trees for the forrest.
 MvdV> True. As it was I indeed had some hope things could turn for the
 MvdV> better. I had not given up all hope yet.

I had a similar experience. I worked as a tool & die maker for a company
called Solar Turbines. I was used to working 48+ hours a week when the
normal hours were 40. Then one day they came along and told us that the
overtime was finished and we were cut to 36 hours a week. I went along
with it. Then they put me on second shift and in order to keep my job, I
went along with that. I balked at the next move, which was to cut my pay
from that of a T&D maker to a machinist's level. They told me that I'd
have to take the cut in pay or be laid off. I chose the latter and never
looked back. As it turned out, losing that job was a good thing.

 MvdV>>>>> So.. I dropped the test. What could I do?
 RW>>>> As the stubborn person you've proven to be, continue with your
 RW>>>> tests on your own time?
 MvdV>>> At that point it was already clear to me that I was in all
 MvdV>>> likehood going to outlive that company and that investing my
 MvdV>>> own time in it was not going to pay off. So I didn't.
 RW>> You're right. You should have left the very minute your boss told
 RW>> you to stop testing.

 MvdV> Quitting on a job on the spot is not a good idea under the Dutch
 MvdV> legal system. Actually quitting on a job without having a new one
 MvdV> is a bad idea in any case.

That is, if you're living from paycheck to paycheck. Having a monetary pad
to fall back on allows you to quit before having another job.

 MvdV> Unless there is a very good reason. Like sexual harassment or being
 MvdV> put in physical danger.

 RW>> One engineer came to me with a design for a locking system for the
 RW>> money vault. I looked at his design and told him that it wouldn't be
 RW>> secure enough.

 MvdV> Hmmm.. sounds very familiar... ;)

 RW>> He told me to build it anyway and so I did, according to his
 RW>> specifications. When it was finished, I showed it to him and he
 RW>> was satisfied with how it worked.

 MvdV> Same here. No back doors, no tricks, no way - except for dynamite -
 MvdV> to open the safe without the (electronic) key.

 RW>> Then I told him to step outside of the office door and take the keys
 RW>> to it with him, then wait 1 minute and come back in. When he came
 RW>> back in, to his astonishment, I had the vault open. We then sat down
 RW>> and together we designed one that couldn't be opened without the
 RW>> proper key.

 MvdV> Why did you not tell him *before* you made it?

I did! He told me to build it anyway.

 MvdV> I pointed out the weak spot of the system before we even started.
 MvdV> The weak spot being that it is not a good idea to have all the
 MvdV> vaults spread around the country - some 400 - have the same
 MvdV> electronic key.

That's just asking for trouble.

 MvdV> The customer said that was no problem as the electronic key was
 MvdV> physically tied to the armoured car that was to collect the money
 MvdV> from the safe. To open the safe the armoured car needed to get
 MvdV> close enough to plug in the cable. To boot, there was not one
 MvdV> armoured car, but there were a few dozens. All equipped with the
 MvdV> same electronic key. They armoured car was impregnable the
 MvdV> customer claimed.

The fare collection system designed by the outfit I worked for had double
keys. One was for the cabinet itself and the other was for the vault
system. The transit people who collected all that fare money, each had one
of those keys. Plus, thanks to the new design that we came up with, it
required two mechanical keys to open the bank to remove the money.

 MvdV> But then of course one day someone found a way to remove the black
 MvdV> box that contained the electronic key from one of the armoured cars
 MvdV> and open many of the vaults in one night. How much was stolen was
 MvdV> never published, my estimate is somewhere between. 1 and 10
 MvdV> million. (Euro)

 MvdV> Inside job of course....

That could very well have happened to our fare collection system. But I've
never heard that it did. The funny thing about it is, the entire fare
collection system was built in San Diego, yet the rapid transit system
there doesn't use it. Their's in built in France.

 RW>> Those vaults are still in use today.

 MvdV> Same here, but after the theft they changed to a system of multiple
 MvdV> keys. Not after us having designed some additional equipment for
 MvdV> the purpose... ;-)

Nothing like job security...

               R\%/itt




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