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S.Africa: Affirmative Action: Lessons from my Work – How black people completely miss the point – another reason why they fail…

WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.

Original Post Date: 2010-04-05 Time: 10:00:02  Posted By: Jan

I have to tell you all this story from my work. It shows how Black people, modern black people, completely miss the point that is right before their eyes.

A few months ago, one of the Computer Programmers (they call them “Developers” these days) in our area, a middle aged, balding white guy, came up with a clever idea. This guy is our “boffin” on IVR systems. These are those telephone systems where you are told: Press 1 for this and 2 for that. The white guy came up with the idea for a general utility which we could add into any existing telephone system. It was for “authentication”. The idea was simple: On any incoming system, if we wanted a customer to enter a PIN number, then the telephone operator could route them to his utility which would allow the customer to enter a PIN, and he would then call any other system function to check it, and then return the customer to the agent. It was basically the IVR equivalent of a Login screen with a password.

Suddenly, 2 other departments wanted it badly. So my black boss then called on me to be the System’s Analyst for the task and the IVR guy would be the Developer. He needed to assign a Project Manager so he chose Lebo, a young black woman who was a PM but who had ZERO experience with computer systems. He told her: Don’t worry – these 2 guys know their stuff, they’ll see to it that the project is a success, work with them.

No problem. Over several weeks we designed the 2 IVR systems, and each of the “customer” Departments then came up with their own issues, requirements and assorted challenges and nonsense. No problem, I sorted out most of it and between myself and the IVR guy we guided the PM on what was important and what wasn’t.

It was frustrating, but 3 months later the projects were successes despite many strange challenges.

Then out of the blue Lebo resigned.

Lebo was a small, quiet, black woman married to a black man who was a doctor. She was quite smart and stylish. I worked with her on 3 projects, including an innovative one which had been tried about 4 times before and FAILED each time. I rolled up my sleeves, abandoned my Systems Analyst role and wrote and developed something new and revolutionary – “My Invention” – shall we call it. In short, on all 3 projects I played a major role and sometimes was the crucial reason why those projects pulled through – as in the last one’s case.

Lebo experienced nothing but successes… in an area she had zero experience and where success is in fact NOT the norm, even for very experienced PMs.

At times, like with the Email system, where I invented new stuff (things that had not been thought of before and which nobody had even conceived of), I would say to her: Ignore this person, that person’s talking cr*p, etc. This is what’s important, that’s not important.

I thought I’d done good and I thought we were on good terms.

When she resigned she came to me on 2 occasions and she spoke to me. I was quite pleased with myself, having felt that we’d succeeded and she should be grateful. Actually – NOT! Not at all! I joked with her, saying, “You’ll miss me…” and she responded, “Yes, I might… I’ll miss… ‘f*cking idiot’ and (I can’t remember the other term)”.

It turned out, in my final discussions with her, that what concerned her the most, were the times when I had cursed out of frustration! I do curse quite a bit, and I admit I have a potty mouth, but its my way of dealing with liars and fools!!! Yes, it may sound arrogant, but I’m actually not wrong.

Let me digress a moment, but it is relevant to my point. A Muslim man came to me one day. He was a Java Developer. He said to me, “Jan, why is it that Management listens to YOU but they don’t listen to us?” I said to him, “Because I fight more battles than you know of”. Actually, what I forgot to tell him was how many times I had pointed out key facts to management which saved them money, or saved them from some disaster or helped them to recover from a DISASTER. Management, to very senior levels had learned that trusting my judgement can save them money and save their backsides!! That’s why Management takes me seriously. I’ve helped them many times, through nothing but opening my mouth.

In fact, I can say ANYTHING to my Indian boss and he listens. He never chides me. On occasions when other managers have been privvy to some of these sessions, others were a bit freaked. One guy said to me, “Jan, what you’ve just said is a very serious career-limiting move”. But I know my Indian boss. He is deeper. He knows where I’m coming from. He listens. In fact, I learned that my Indian boss was himself once fired from a previous job because he also told people things too directly. But he listens to me, because I’ve been right in almost every instance. In fact, the amount of faith he has in me, is almost beyond belief. But he knows one thing: I deliver that which others cannot.

So we return to Lebo. Lebo had no clue whatsoever what she was doing, in a field that is ultra-technical. But, myself and the IVR guy, we know the deal, we know who to believe and we know how to make sound judgements of a situation. We had guided her on to a string of successes…

In fact, I was so successful that the Management Committee of our area had a lunch in my honour and she was invited to it, and then came up with an excuse not to attend.

So when all was said and done, Lebo did not appreciate success in an environment where failure is common. She did not appreciate our expert guidance and the way we had helped to guide her through a minefield where any one of dozens of issues could have tripped the project up and brought disaster down upon all. No… none of this meant anything to her. All that bothered her were 2 phrases that I had used. The times when I had said, “F*cking idiot” bothered her more… than the minefields I had side-stepped and prevented. I had known which f*cking idiot, would have brought us crashing down and dealt with it.

Success did not mean anything to her. But my 2 sentences did. My Technical Specs, the way I had attended meetings and dealt with people did not matter. (Oh, and by the way, I never swore at anyone to their faces). I had merely told HER in PRIVATE afterwards, “this” or “that”. In fact, nobody had a single complaint about me, and everyone liked me and worked with me smoothly. We did not have a single personal incident or confrontation with anyone. It was what I said in PRIVATE, that truly irked her!!

I just laughed when Lebo said these things to me, and I was very polite about it. I decided it was not worth the effort and bother of actually arguing with her before she leaves. She will be gone and I’ll never see her again. Maybe another day, when she’s older and had lots of failures she might remember me – maybe not – who cares.

I just thought to myself afterwards, it shows you how these modern blacks think. They have been filled with junk knowledge which really does not help them to make anything work, and they have no real appreciation of why it is that we whites make some things work.

So after all this time, working right there with us, she had missed the entire point of EVERYTHING. She had learned nothing and her judgement or appreciation of the situation and what we faced and what we OVERCAME… is completely lost. She was there in body, but her mind perceived nothing of note. She left there, as clueless as the day she arrived there. She did not appreciate that we had succeeded, and even less, did she grasp WHY we had succeeded.

Some perceive more than others. Some black PM’s listen to my every word and act on it.

I have watched, over the last 5 years, several occasions where non-whites thought they knew all the answers. They had the education, they had the positions of power they could do anything they wanted. You would be shocked at how many were either fired or ran away or moved away of their own accord.

Normally, the Indians perform. Of all the non-whites, they do the best by far. But even they struggle sometimes. I watched one exceptionally high-ranking Indian who did not keep his mouth shut for anyone. I saw him liberally and openly, in a board room full of 50(43)+ high ranking people SWEARING OPENLY at 2 Afrikaners who did a nice presentation to him. He told them their work was “sh*t” and he swore at them. This same Indian, the other day asked to be moved sideways out of his field. This guy was the GURU of Computer related stuff in the entire banking group… but I think he decided on a sideways move when he saw his systems weren’t working… and success was few and far between.

I’ve seen many with big mouths, big attitudes and COMPLETE SELF-CONFIDENCE… walk in… and be hammered in the difficult world of daily life… discovering, to their own utter shock… that what they were taught at university, actually did not work in the real world. And they mostly left of their own accord.

Interestingly, it is whites who are the most tenacious. Whites hang in there, and when the going gets tough, due to very few, if any options, whites hang in there and try to survive.

All these know-all, high-ranking black managers and “Intellectuals” are more clueless than you can imagine. I have seen many interesting things with my own eyes.