New year, new blog-layout, new posting frequency?

The background is from a trip I took to Kiruna in the northern parts of Sweden, it was something that meant a lot for me. My sister got married in the ice church at Ice Hotel. I chose this as my background because it's a stunning vista and more importantly because it's something I have taken very dearly to my heart. I hope that 2011 will be just the same, a stunning vista that I can take to my heart and keep forever.

Enough with sentimentals. I know that most of my readers only come here for my rants. I'm going to let you have some insight in my work-life. I work in marketing. Marketing for the Swedish branch of a large coorporation dealing in laboratory supplies and apparature. I'll share a few anecdotes.

Among other things we sell chemicals. One of our customers is a company manufacturing pharmaceuticals. Such companies are under strict regulations and need to audit the suppliers in accordance with FDA regulations. The supplier in question was a Polish chemical firm. After such an audit had been done we arranged a meeting between the customer and the supplier to go over what problems had been detected. We represented with the Product manager in chemicals and the Sales Representative handling the customer on our behalf. The supplier represented with the CEO and the on-site lab technician, both females in the mid-30's.

This meeting was held just outside my office door so I could hear exactly everything that was going on. It was one of those fairly akward meetings; there were a bit of language barriers, there were some cultural differences and the natural awkwardness that comes when someone has audited you and found problems. A very professional and courteous tone was being maintained though and there weren't any serious problems to talk of really. Everyone was very relieved when the audit had been reviewed by all parts and the tensioned lessened. The CEO then asks our Sales Rep if he could tell them a thing or two about our company. We do have a power-pointpresentation just for things like this, but unfortunately it's only in Swedish. So our Sales Rep shows the slides and translates on the fly.

However it bothers him to no end that he doesn't have anything to hand out or that he can't find the presentation in english, he feels a little bit unprefessional. But then he realises that with him he has a handout listing all our major suppliers in each and every field that we work in, fairly neatly presented. This puts him to ease as we work with high profile brands in every field. So he gives the two women the hand-out and they begin looking through it. He is just about to continue his presentation when the CEO interrupts him very calmly:

'I understand now why our figures for your region remain at such a low level, since under important chemical suppliers you have listed all of our competitors but not us'

This remains to this day the gravest faux pas I have ever experienced in my work life.

My other anecdote is about a customer that manufactures PVC. I read in the local newspaper that they had to close their plant, under penalty of 6million USD/day, because the Swedish work environment agency performed an inspection and found that they still hadn't fixed the problems that were discovered 6 months earlier. Apparently it was a problem with a vessel containing chlorine gas.

As a manufacturing company, by what reasoning is it correct to ignore the work environment agency when they come by and say 'Heya guys, you should probably take a look at this'. Do you just go 'Sure, sure we'll totally do that' and hope that they won't come back? Or do you reason 'What's the worst that can happen'?

I've studied chemistry, and I know that chlorine gas is toxic. I've also studied some history... and I know that they used that shit in two world wars! To KILL PEOPLE!

The world is a place where millions of bad decisions are being made each day fortunately they are outweighed by the incountable good ones. That's why I never become mad when someone makes one. It's when they start defending their bad decisions without a moment to reflect on their actions I go ape-shit.