Recently, my group put in a report and the Navy was all like DISAPPROVED. I'm all like, "you just did this to me":
So I fire back 3 pages of single-spaced typed disposition saying "a trained monkey can do your job when you just stamp everything 'DISAPPROVED' without even thinking about whether it's really a problem, or HOW MUCH YOU ARE CHARGING THE TAXPAYERS, of whom I am one. My 3 page response is best summarized below:
The Government comes back at me all "BLAH BLAH BLAH and STUFF and we are scared of independent thought and change frightens us and upsets our delicate constitutions. Furthermore, we could not care less about the noble taxpayer and would like to invoke as much pain as possible on you and your cohorts while minimizing the inconvenience to our lazy rear ends." That's actually a direct quote, can you believe it? OK, that's a bit of a stretch. So, after doing some homework, I found a way to prove that their lack of effort and diligence was actually going to cause them to do about 10 times the amount of work they expected, which just proved that we were right all along. If an artistic genius summarized my battle with the Government of this issue in a painting, it would like this:
In case you were wondering, I'm the one still standing. 
3 comments:
I want to argue with the government!!!
These gov't monkeys... do they enjoy some special tax-exempt status? Or are they taxpayers like you?
The author fails to recognize the degree to which mistrust characterizes the defense contractor - gov't relationship.
(Recommended reading list: Brothers in Arms. Running Critical. The Defender. Building American Submarines 1914-1940. Forged In War.) Good ideas are often the victims of this mistrust.
Seen through the eyes of the gov't, the contractor lacks credibility when every "recommendation" results in what is best for the contractor or production of the product, not what is best for the end user or the life cycle of the product, and when these recommendations are based on technical rationale generated by a seemingly endless revolving door of transient junior engineers.
There are exceptional individuals and slugs on both sides of the fence. However, there are not enough of them to make a major impact.
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