Hating (another spoken language WTF)



  • At my job we mantain an ERP system. The last couple days two of my buddies were doing some new implementation on a credit module, and were talking about some rating that is applied to people who make purchases with credit cards.

    Now, the majority of people in Brazil have some basic grasp of English, but it stays at that - a very loose grasp. So they pronnounce the 'r' in "rating" as if it were a Portuguese 'r', making the word sound like "hating".

    So I've spent the morning hearing things that sound like "[this guy's] hate [is greater than that other one's]", "[you need this much] hate [to get into that flow]", "[check it out, I'm going to increase your] hating" and "[there is a lot of] hating [in this one]."

    I would tell them again how the proper pronnunciation goes but I don't want to sound pedantic to them, and also I find it funny whenever they say something that can be said again out of context.



  •  Hated eh?



  • Roar!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]At my job we mantain an ERP system.[/quote] ERP? The first few google hits aren't entirely enlightening.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @PJH said:

    ERP? The first few google hits aren't entirely enlightening.

    Enterprise Resource Planning. Basically, keep track of all of your manufacturing, inventory, supplies, accounting, etc.



  • @PJH said:

    [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]At my job we mantain an ERP system.
    ERP? The first few google hits aren't entirely enlightening.[/quote]

    It stands for [b]E[/b]nterprise [b]R[/b]esource [b]P[/b]ay-a-lot-of-money-to-SAP.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Xyro said:

    SAP
    At the risk of asking for an explantion of a TLA or ETLA....



    On an entirely (un)related note on buzzword bingo and crap use of language in business-speak generally, I really need to get round to posting an extract of the job description going round our work/department at the moment, for approval, for a new position. It uses the verb 'socalise' in a way I've never seen it used before...


  • Garbage Person

    @PJH said:

    @Xyro said:
    SAP
    At the risk of asking for an explantion of a TLA or ETLA....
    Giant German WTF-company that sells an terrible, but massively expensive ERP product and the army of consultants required to make it not-quite-work-right-so-you-have-to-keep-hiring-consultants. It's a favorite of executives everywhere because they make really good presentations. SAP has been indirectly responsible for such WTFs as Hershey forgetting to make Easter Candy one year.



  • @PJH said:

    ... for approval, for a new position. It uses the verb 'socalise' in a way I've never seen it used before...
    And thus the verb 'socialise" has been used in a way I've never seen it used before...



  • @TheRider said:

    @PJH said:
    ... for approval, for a new position. It uses the verb 'socalise' in a way I've never seen it used before...
    And thus the word 'socialise" has been used in a way I've never seen it used before...

    That's because he's British. Or Canadian. Same crap.

    A real American, and decent human being, would spell it "socialize."



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @TheRider said:
    @PJH said:
    ... for approval, for a new position. It uses the verb 'socalise' in a way I've never seen it used before...
    And thus the word 'socialise" has been used in a way I've never seen it used before...

    That's because he's British. Or Canadian. Same crap.

    A real American, and decent human being, would spell it "socialize."

    I would spell it 'socalize'.



  • @derula said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @TheRider said:
    @PJH said:
    ... for approval, for a new position. It uses the verb 'socalise' in a way I've never seen it used before...
    And thus the word 'socialise" has been used in a way I've never seen it used before...

    That's because he's British. Or Canadian. Same crap.

    A real American, and decent human being, would spell it "socialize."

    I would spell it 'socalize'.

    Southern Californians are worse than the British.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Southern Californians are worse than the British.

    Hey, at least they're not Northern Californians.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Southern Californians are worse than the British.

    Hey, at least they're not Northern Californians.

    Or dead.



  • @Weng said:

    Giant German WTF-company that sells an terrible, but massively expensive ERP product and the army of consultants required to make it not-quite-work-right-so-you-have-to-keep-hiring-consultants.
    Hah, a few years ago I was working in a company which wanted to become a SAP partner. These plans however were quickly put on hold when it turned out that just to see a presentation of what we'd be doing (a presentation that doesn't guarantee we'd ever get the job), the company would have to pay 6000€ + 2000€ for each participant at the presentation.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    A real American, and decent human being, would spell it "socialize."

    There are real Americans who are decent human beings?!

    </troll>


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @TheRider said:

    @PJH said:
    ... for approval, for a new position. It uses the verb 'socalise' in a way I've never seen it used before...
    And thus the verb 'socialise" has been used in a way I've never seen it used before...

    So I misspelt it. Sue me.



    Anyway, here we go:

    [The company] has customers worldwide and the job will also involve infrequent travel to other countries to socialise methods of working and to receive direct peer feedback.

    And on getting together some requirements for increasing the amount of diagnostics our software produces:
    When this doc[ument] is produced it will be socialised with the team leaders so we get some common ground on what ‘the [device]’ and ‘app[lications]s’ are reporting about themselves that allow O&M to ‘do the business’. Some stuff that is likely to be included include ‘debug_level =’ type stuff in the [configuration file].


  • Sounds like they just replaced "communicate" with "socialize." Sure it's not just a translation error?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Sounds like they just replaced "communicate" with "socialize." Sure it's not just a translation error?
    I'm sure. His native language is English.



  • [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]So they pronnounce the 'r' in "rating" as if it were a Portuguese 'r', making the word sound like "hating".[/quote]Perhaps because I am on the other side of the Atlantic, I had some difficulty visualizingaudializing how that could happen, since the Portuguese 'r' is actually more pronounced than the English 'r'.

    But come to think of it there are parts of Brazil where they pronounce the 'r' close to the English pronunciation, I'm just not used to hearing it.

    The only case of funny pronunciation I can think of at the moment is "showdown" instead of "shutdown".



  • @Zecc said:

    The only case of funny pronunciation I can think of at the moment is "showdown" instead of "shutdown".

    Contestant from East Side: Are you ready for a CHALLENGE?!?!?
    Contestant from West Side: 'Cause this here operatin' system en't biggenough fer the two of us...
    Prepare for... Core Wars: 20X1 Edition!
    Eastside initiates process: Retro Virus!
    The world is transformed into 8-bit color! Planck's constant is increased by a factor of four! COSMIC SANITY CHECK FAILED
    Westside initiates process: Ouroboros Function!
    The blue gate is linked to the orange gate, which is linked to the blue gate, which is linked to the... LOGIC GATE MALFUNCTION
    Eastside initiates process: Chrono Fork!
    One, no, wait, two, no, wait, four, no, wait, eight, no, wait... INFINITE THREADSPAWN DETECTED
    The CPU is KO'd!
    Reverting to backup systems...
    Backup systems are offline! CRITICAL ERROR
    Holographic projector malfunction! Reality inversion in 3... 2... 1...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Southern Californians are worse than the British.

    Well, naturally! All Americans are worse than the British!



  • "Your rate has made you powerful"


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @ZPedro said:

    "Your rate has made you powerful"
     

    Brazillian Stormtrooper: Is this R2D2?

    Whichever Guy Said It:  No, this is [b]R[/b]2D2, not the droid you're looking for.

    BS: What's a dhoid?



  • @Zecc said:

    [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]So they pronnounce the 'r' in "rating" as if it were a Portuguese 'r', making the word sound like "hating".

    Perhaps because I am on the other side of the Atlantic, I had some difficulty visualizingaudializing how that could happen, since the Portuguese 'r' is actually more pronounced than the English 'r'.

    [/quote]
    Perhaps they were told that "English 'r' is less pronounced than Portugese 'r'", so they are pronouncing too little.



  • @Weng said:

    SAP has been indirectly responsible for such WTFs as Hershey forgetting to make Easter Candy one year.

    Do you have a source for that, or was that just sarcasm?



  • @Bulb said:

    @Zecc said:

    [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]So they pronnounce the 'r' in "rating" as if it were a Portuguese 'r', making the word sound like "hating".

    Perhaps because I am on the other side of the Atlantic, I had some difficulty visualizingaudializing how that could happen, since the Portuguese 'r' is actually more pronounced than the English 'r'.


    Perhaps they were told that "English 'r' is less pronounced than Portugese 'r'", so they are pronouncing too little.[/quote]

    We pronnounce the 'r' as an american 'h' when it's the first letter in a word, or when there's a "rr" between vowels - otherwise it's pronnounced the same as a spanish single 'r'.

    So for example, if my colleagues try to say "that index is outside the range of the array", it'll sound like "thaty index izoutside the henge of the a-hay" (that's how it would sound with their full accent at work).


  • Garbage Person

    @Anonymouse said:

    Do you have a source for that, or was that just sarcasm?
    I know a guy that worked on the failure analysis part. I think there's a case study out there somewhere if you look hard enough. It was caught several months in advance, but that only covered the packaging. Lead time for the materials to make the candy is actually over a calendar year - the system was supposed to order it, but for whatever reason couldn't handle more than a year's preplanning.





  • @pjt33 said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    A real American, and decent human being, would spell it "socialize."
    There are real Americans who are decent human beings?!

    </troll>

    No, silly, he was talking about two different people...  (ba-da-boom)




  • Garbage Person

     I guess I got the holiday wrong, but there you have it. Though to hear the guy tell it, it was more of a 'the system frakked up after it was installed' rather than a 'the system frakked up because insufficient backup plans were in place for a cutover failure'

     

    A real telling line about the state of the ERP industry is this:

    <font face="courier new,courier">

    Tom Crawford, the general manager of SAP America's consumer products business unit, verified that his consultants were at Hershey sites to help resolve the problems. But, he made clear, "There are really no software issues per se." Crawford explained that his consultants "are just making sure they [Hershey employees] are using the business processes (built into the software) correctly." Manugistics also said it was working with Hershey on "business process improvements."  </font>

    Business processes should not chnge to match software - software should change to match business processes. The ONLY exception is if the business processes do not collect enough information or are broken - there is no indication of such.



  • I understand what you're saying, and to a point yes, the new system should mimic the existing business process(es).  But during requirements gathering and design, they were supposed to identify inefficient/redundant/useless processes.  I've known people who would spend three days a week putting together a report nobody read, ever!  I mean, not for auditing, not for stake holders, nothing.  And on top of that, at least half the time the report was inaccurate.

    Business process *should* change, within reason of course, in order to stay competitive and to identify where they're just bleeding away money.



  • @C-Octothorpe said:

    I've known people who would spend three days a week putting together a report nobody read, ever!  I mean, not for auditing, not for stake holders, nothing.  And on top of that, at least half the time the report was inaccurate.

    ...?

    So basically he was seeing hookers on the company dime, is what you're saying?

    It raises so many questions. How did anybody know the report was inaccurate? Why would anybody care if it was or was not? Why not just replace the report with an Excel file making judicious use of the RAND() function to fill cells? Or even easier, just submit the same report (to whom??) each month? Of course the biggest question is, why did he keep doing it? The only possible answer is: to see hookers on the company dime.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So basically he was seeing hookers on the company dime, is what you're saying?

    *She* apparently was...

    @blakeyrat said:

    How did anybody know the report was inaccurate?

    I found it was inaccurate.  It was only until after writing up a quick POC did I realize that the report was entirely redundant (asked who this goes to, was pointed to another person who pointed me to another person, which lead to a dead end).  It was just a legacy report which was uploaded to a SharePoint site (which nobody looked at).

    @blakeyrat said:

    Why would anybody care if it was or was not?

    Nobody did care.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Why not just replace the report with an Excel file making judicious use of the RAND() function to fill cells?

    Funny you say that; it was an Excel spreadsheet...

    @blakeyrat said:

    Of course the biggest question is, why did he keep doing it? The only possible answer is: to see hookers on the company dime.

    She was an old timer.  I didn't stick around long enough to personally see what they did with her, but my understanding was that they just gave her some menial tasks.  She was just a couple of years from retirement anyway...

    Also funny was that she didn't even know that her "report" went into a write-only black hole.

    I should also point out that this was a pseudo-government, not for profit (yet high cash flow) organization.  They had tons of cash and had to spend every dollar of it was my understanding at least.



  • Wow.  This thread took a turn for the worse.



  • @Weng said:

    A real telling line about the state of the ERP industry is this:

    <font face="courier new,courier">

    Tom Crawford, the general manager of SAP America's consumer products business unit, verified that his consultants were at Hershey sites to help resolve the problems. But, he made clear, "There are really no software issues per se." Crawford explained that his consultants "are just making sure they [Hershey employees] are using the business processes (built into the software) correctly." Manugistics also said it was working with Hershey on "business process improvements."  </font>

     

    Manugistics.  Is there a more horrible word in the English language?

    (Yes, I know it's a made up word.)

     



  • You're absolutely right...  It wasn't bad until you posted.


  • Garbage Person

     Yes, business processes should change - especially the overhead processes. Core processes, however, tend to be pretty well taken care of. The details may change ("Type it here" instead of "Hand-write it here") and redundant or computable steps removed, but the overarching process should stay the same.

     

    Diverging rant: Most SAP/Business Process Consultants don't seem to 'get' the 'remove redundant or computable steps' part, either. My father works in "Reverse Vendor and Special Logistics" for a global consumer goods corporation. Essentially, his entire job is to ship defective materials back to overseas vendors (they change vendors every time they get an offer for half a cent less per shipping unit - and quality is generally abysmal. In particular, 50% of their glass purchases wind up going back, and about 25% of other materials), and to ship partially completed goods from functional US factories to dysfunctional overseas factories so they can still claim theproduct was manufactured in asskrakistan (or Ireland, as the case may be) before being shipped back to the US for sale. Nobody cares that so much of the overseas material sucks ass. That's a huge WTF. Oh, and did I mention that some of the things they produce are FDA regulated, and that "Oh fuck, there's <foreign material> in this finished product" is a monthly occurance?

     The other huge WTF is the business process for shipping materials back to a vendor. It involves taking a screenshot of one SAP screen, printing it, mentally transforming some of the data and reentering it into another SAP screen. This is such a huge part of their business that IT actually licensed a screenshot grabber program that lets you batch up a bunch of screenshots before printing them. This was done on advice of SAP Consultants - who should have, if they did their fucking jobs right, fucking wired that process into a big red button that says "SHIP THIS SHIT BACK". Fighting with SAP consumes so much of his time that they actually had to hire a second reverse logistics person to handle wrangling the shipping (they also have a tendency to want to air freight things that legally can not be air freighted)



  • @C-Octothorpe said:

    You're absolutely right...  It wasn't bad until you posted.

    Actually, that retort would have been correct if I had written, "Wow.  This thread is taking a turn for the worse."  But, I didn't.  What have you got to say for yourself now, Mr. Knowitall? 



  • Whatever makes you happy, Mr. Little Man.



  • So it's been the whole weekend and nobody's said:

    Raters gonna rate

    I don't fucking know you people anymore!


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