This is my biggest pet peeve. I’m an engineer. I work at an equipment manufacturer, so the documents my department creates become physical parts. So my signature is a gate towards building something. Another way to look at it is your mistakes are going to be a physical item in the shop for people to look at, and they will be enshrined in our document control system for the next 10+ years. So my signature is meaningful to me. And therefore, when Carl at the pet place, or car place, or doctors office wants me to sign their incorrect, incomplete, or blank form, i refuse. What are these forms for? Do they have a function? How would we accomplish anything as a society without forms to sign? And they always, always tell me its their “standard form”, as if that is a powerful argument in favor of signing it. Why does a poorly executed form filled out by a teenager become more compelling if it is what they give to everyone?
Man, if that's your biggest pet peeve. One of mine is semi-related to yours. Calling a company, any company, and having to answer half a dozen questions to verify that you're who you say you are. I mean I'd get it if it was the doctor's office, or the store that sold nuclear codes...but every business does this now.
I have justified this to myself by saying I don't stamp the forms from "Carl," only the drawings I prepare.
And then, when you get through their automated system and get to a live person, the first question: "Hi, can I get your name and account number?" WHY DID I JUST HAVE TO PUSH ALL THOSE BUTTONS TO NAVIGATE THE OPTIONS IF I JUST HAVE TO REPEAT MYSELF TO THE LIVE OPERATOR??!!
Them: "It's our policy." Me: "Can I see your policy book so I can understand it.??" That''s just not right, I tell ya whut....
Not many know the angst of 10's of thousands of items built incorrectly with your signature as the approval that everything will be ok. I feel your pain.
I screwed up a drawing view interpretation in my first job out of college. I was writing the CNC program for a Shoda - a giant-assed router. We had like 300+ cabinet doors with the lock hole in the wrong place. Fortunately the customer accepted as-is. Looked funny but function was fine with a small rework run, IIRC. Nowadays 9 times out of 10 i only build one of whatever it is.
Lucky, I used to get pretty extensive prototypes to work out the kinks. In my 2nd job we had an inventory manager who was in charge of ordering components for connectors we made. No CAD there at that time (late 80s), so all drawings were on velum. We had been having assembly problems so we had done a redesign on a particular connector, that redesign had actually been in production for over a year. Our policy at the time was a new drawing from document control with each order to a contractor because some of the shops still had old revs. Well she insisted on keeping drawings in her own files even after being told that no drawings should be sent to a vendor without a release stamp and print date on it from the people who controlled our docs. Of course she ignored that rule repeatedly and it finally got her when she ordered 75,000 2 dollar components that were 2 revs behind and would no longer fit their mated parts. She was fired after that debacle.
