It's not like this is a conscious decision on my part. It's more of a  
side-effect of my management making me responsible for doing the work  
of four people, performing project management functions and providing  
technical leadership in areas in which I have no experience whatsoever  
and for which I have had absolutely no training opportunities at all.  
Then they punish me for my failure to live up to their physically  
impossible demands.

Besides, we are central ITS, and we don't have any labs. Nor does our  
group have any junior people -- with only twenty years of experience  
in the field, I'm one of the more junior people in the group.

Finally, we are talking about hundreds of DIMMs, each of which has to  
be packed and boxed individually -- the boxes have already been  
provided. So regardless of who does this job, it is most certainly not  
something that can be done quickly.

And did I mention that our whole group has always been more than 150%  
oversubscribed in terms of how much work they have to do and how much  
time they have to do it in?


We are one of the largest public research universities. This vendor is  
more than happy to get whatever business we can throw their way, and  
while I don't like the position I find myself in and I honestly wish I  
had the time to get this issue resolved sooner rather than later, I  
simply have to face the facts -- like the fact that I'm now going to  
be out of the office for two weeks while the doctors surgically remove  
my entire thyroid gland, in hopes that this will cure my thyroid cancer.

-- 
Brad Knowles
Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 8, 2009, at 8:37 AM, Stephen P Potter <[email protected]> wrote:

> Brad Knowles wrote:
>> I've got the old 2GB RAM DIMMs sitting in a shelf in my office, and  
>> I'm supposed to package them all up and ship them back to the VAR,  
>> because part of the extra-good price deal we got was that they  
>> would ship the machines with what was already pre-installed, but  
>> that we'd ship that stuff back.
>>
>> I haven't done it yet, and it doesn't look like that's going to  
>> happen any time soon.
>>
> I wouldn't recommend this on so many levels.  This is the type of  
> activity that is covered by our Code Of Ethics, and exactly why  
> things like SOX came about.
> You are now holding an asset (the memory) that rightfully belongs to  
> someone else (the vendor) without providing proper compensation for  
> it.  In effect you are guilty of stealing or unlawful conversion.
>
> Your vendor may be less likely to bargain with you in the future,  
> which could increase your price for future purchases.
>
> In essence, this is akin to shoplifting, and will cause the vendor  
> to have to raise prices overall, which feeds back into the above  
> sentence and raises your prices, even if they still bargain with you.
>
> Take the few minutes it takes to box it up and ship it back.  Or,  
> since you're at a university, get some lab monitor to do it.
>
> -spp
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