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The 69 Words GM Employees Can Never Say
bizwriter (1064470) writes "General Motors put together its take on a George Carlin list of words you can't say. Engineering employees were shown 69 words and phrases that were not to be used in emails, presentations, or memos. They include: defect, defective, safety, safety related, dangerous, bad, and critical. You know, words that the average person, in the context of the millions of cars that GM has recalled, might understand as indicative of underlying problems at the company. Oh, terribly sorry, 'problem' was on the list as well."
Never buy a car from GM. A company that practices this type of policy can not have my confidence in any way.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
You get a Challenger disaster.
In my experience, You have to use exactly these words in order to get management to take problems serious. Turns out it was because they put management in a legal bind.
Any engineer who follows GM's edict should be flogged. Bad stuff happens because good men do nothing.
TCAP-Abort
That's ok, here most of the moneys go to the lawyers anyway.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
If you've ever been deposed as part of a lawsuit, the lawyer will go through every email and key on those particular words to present them is the worst possible light. I had to go through this once and spent three days, basically, justifying every word I used. Now when a customer comes to me and says they have a problem or something is not working, I will ask, "what behavior are you expecting to see and what are you seeing?" When we resolve the "problem", we simply say they should see the expected behavior now and please get back to us if they don't. It sucks but that's the reality.
GM definitely knew they had problems and didn't fix them, but I'm sure there were many emails that were unrelated to their intentional disregard to the known problems that they had to defend along the way. Every little sentence or word that someone has to justify means more time with the lawyers racking up fees. You can't skirt around real problems with the change in words, but it makes it harder for the lawyers to bring in unrelated or insignificant facts into the mix.
Our legal system isn't "silly". It's based on a different set of beliefs about the relationship between the individual and the State than yours is. You're able to have "faith" in your State because your population is most likely more homogeneous than that of the USA -- just like most people in the USA have more faith in their state governments than they have in their national government.
"Avoiding certain words", DOESN'T make sense, because it is STRONG internal evidence that you've got a MAJOR issue you're ignoring. If you have to start "circling the wagons" to keep engineers from SPEAKING THE TRUTH, then you should have been dealing SIGNIFICANTLY more aggressively with the problems. This is a major management failure at GM, and every middle manager that had ANYTHING to do with the cover-up should be summarily dismissed and made an example of.
You're able to have "faith" in your State because your population is most likely more homogeneous than that of the USA
This is the 21st century, there is no more 'homogeneous' populations. And that's a good thing. It would be even better if fucking cunts like you would get their heads out of their asses and stopped with the groupthinking.
"Synergies"? Nope.
"Paradigm"? Absent.
"Holistic approach"? No.
Dude, there isn't a "proactive" in there anywhere.
Now, if you'd have said this was a press release from Pyongyang, I'd have agreed with you.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Having lived on both shores of the Atlantic, I very much believe that both systems would have a lot to learn from each other.
That is, if there was a substantial discussion instead of all the name-calling.
I know, this is slashdot, but in real life it's not that much better.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
> Let me know when you figure out what "free speech" is,
Good idea, then we can tell you all about privacy as well,
This should not be so. The law as it currently stands promotes thes kinds of irrational, destructive practices and behaviours. We need laws that punish engineers who obfuscate, and which protect engineers who speak openly and honestly.
The law is a tool which can shape the morals and behaviour of human beings. At some point in the last 30 years, the West has completely forgotten that the law is a tool for shaping public ethics and morality, and has instead regarded it as a pen an paper RPG which can be gamed, min-maxed, and generally ruined in spirit by twisting the meaning of its letters. The degeneracy of our insitutions, private and public, has its roots in the degeneracy of the courts and legal professions and their practices.
May the Maths Be with you!
A sensible response! But I'm not giving up my U.S. Constitution. Although there seems to be a large mass of people living here / moving here that feel the need to change it. I say to them: Go start your own country if you think you have all the answers! Quit trying to change mine!
Lawyer speak. They are trying to make it difficult for investigators to find incriminating or "smoking gun" evidence through a word-search on their electronic documents (such as when they are forced to hand them over on discovery or under subpoena, or else leaked by a whistleblower or hacker).
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Yep, although if I was on a jury, I would see that list as evidence GM had premeditated any deaths caused be safety problems as well premeditated hiding evidence from the court.