When Smart People are Bad Employees

Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by phlux on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @11:06PM (#2278403)

The difference here was that the guy liked to try to be specifically obtuse and difficult.

It wasn't a matter of thinking through a problem before hand - it was an exercise in proving/looking smart.

Spending 5+ minutes consternating over the type of screws that came with the shelf is not "thinking ahead" :)

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by bugsy on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @04:32AM (#2278983)

Sounds like he was a conscientious designer with an intuition for usability. I can relate to him, I also analyze screws and designs of trivial things. Is this really the optimal screw for this sort of task?

If you didn't want this level of analysis, why the hell would you take a $150/hr engineer and have him screwing in shelves rather than call in the $12/hr maintenance man?

I know the answer already. Your company thinks it is saving money by not having janitorial or secretarial staff and just have the engineers do all the menial cleaning and shelving tasks.

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by Muzza on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @05:55AM (#2279142)

> If you didn't want this level of analysis, why the hell would you take a $150/hr engineer and have him screwing in shelves rather than call in the $12/hr maintenance man?

At the time of the incident with the screws, the guy was an intern...

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