Warning: This may contain traces of a rant.

As most of you may know, my job is mainly office based, with a little onsite (and abroad 🙂 ) testing/inspecting of jacks involved.

In my office mode (this is the one where I drink 10 cups of strong coffee a day and bounce off the walls to stay awake), I’m very anal efficient with paperwork – I’ve tweaked all the different forms, reports, certificates etc. we do so they’re mostly controlled by The Database™ (that reminds me – must go fetch a backup CD from home, it’s been a while since I took a copy offsite) – this is my baby, and something I do not trust in the hands of anyone else (no boss, you CAN’T have my admin password on that file).

Anyway, my paperwork is always up to scratch, if not better – this was proved when we had our recent ISO audit.

And so today Brian (our consultant for all things ISO/H&S) came in waving a folder…

“Ah, Paul, just the man I wanted to see…” he said, before I had the time to shut my door and hide away.

And so it happened – he’s only gone and produced another stupid little form which will aid us with ‘traceability’ when we’re testing. Now bear in mind I had a discussion with the ISO auditor regarding traceability of test gauges used for testing at the time of the audit – he pointed out that I couldn’t PROVE that a jack had been tested on a specific rig/gauge. I countered with the fact that regardless of what we did – NOBODY would ever be able to prove it (using his same logic, I’m correct with this).

But no, now I’m expected to implement yet another form for the workshop monkeys to fill out – and I’m only just winning them over to the ‘just tick boxes’ jobsheet introduced about 4 years ago…

It just makes you think “Is it all REALLY worth it?”

As I’m not going to Poland later this month, I’m starting to think I may pop to see my cousin in the south of France – it’s been at the back of my mind for a while now, but I’m seriously starting to think about moving to France and giving up the rat race to be a labourer or summat…