How many executives does it take to change a lightbulb? For Company X, approximately 28. At least that was the case a few weeks ago.

Let’s do some analogy here, to make the explanation easier. Just imagine Company X produces rooms, each with a lightbulb. A few weeks ago, a checking station discovered a batch of rooms’ lightbulbs not working. They’re all dead. And here’s the chronology of events that followed (unlike many you’ve read across the internet, this is an actual event that happened at my workplace…)

1.) The manager of that checking station sent a technician to check on the bulbs [manager plus technician - 2 heads]

2.) The technician suspected bulb problem, replaced the bulbs and summoned the bulb quality engineer over to investigate on the allegedly defective bulbs. [bulb quality engineer - 1 head]

3.) Bulb quality engineer knew no shit about no motherfucking bulbs because he has been only a coordinator most of the time, so he summoned for the bulb supplier to take a look. [bulb supplier - 1 head]

4.) Bulb supplier verified the allegedly defective bulbs, declared that they’re all functional and weren’t defective, and subsequently sent the bulbs back to checking station manager. But the bulbs still won’t light up when fitted back to the rooms. Checking station manager panicked and called for an emergency meeting with 2 quality managers, 1 product engineering technician and a few other strangers [quality managers + product engineering tech + strangers = 4 -5 heads]

5.) Before the meeting, one of the quality managers invited a good looking technical investigator to the meeting to provide the necessary assistance. [technical investigator - 1 head]

6.) In the meeting, technical investigator took a brief look at the case, and pointed out that the problem lies in the pull switch wiring, which was grossly out of specs, and even provided an official report of his findings. Once obtained the findings report, checking station manager called for another meeting to discuss the next course of action, which involved another product engineering engineer + manager, switch quality engineer, and another quality manager [engineering engineer/manager, quality manager/engineer - 4 heads]

7.) In the meeting, the team called for actions to check on the wiring specs of the switch, mechanical specs of the bulb and somebody to check with other manufacturing regions if they’re aware of such failures. The actions would involve another 2 quality engineers to liaise with their foreign counterparts [2 quality engineers and their respective counterparts - 4 heads]

8.) One of the engineers got the specs and determined that indeed the switch wiring was not compliant. About the same time, a nincompoop engineer came up with a rather preposterous finding that the problem was due to a defective driver chip that controls the intensity of the bulb… whereas, a bulb runs on electricity and doesn’t depend on any electronics (a case of blunder and a good laugh). [nincompoop engineer - 1 hollow head]

9.) Just when the issue was about to be solved, somehow, out of sheer confusion and miscommunication, the team in the second meeting decided to instead change all the bulbs to another brand, which the team alleged (based on gut feel) was due to the non-conforming mechanical specs of the lightbulbs. A test run was then conducted by a team of production control folks. [number of heads of production control undetermined but estimated not less than 4 - assume 4 heads]

10.) Room fails to light up again with the alternative brand bulbs. Checking station manager, with the quality manager(s), escalated issue to world wide attention, and calling for solutions. More meetings followed… and I lost track of the heads since then…[another few heads got privy of the issue before I stopped tracking - not less than 4 heads.]

And the rooms are still dark today… what the fuck. This is called red tapes, bureaucracy and corporate idiocy. If you have yet to see such things, don’t worry, you’ll probably see it very soon… (higher chance if you’re employed in an MNC, of course…)

Oh, by the way, that good looking and smart technical investigator who nailed the issue with only one look, wasn’t me. Really.