Is your institution using a pre-CIA sabotage manual to set policies?
You decide.
This morning, while seeking an entirely different and completely innocuous document, I came across the Simple Sabotage Field Manual developed by the precursor to the CIA (the Office of Strategic Services) in 1944 to provide instructions for sabotaging enemy organizations from the inside using inefficiency, bad management practices, and delays.
I read it. Of course.
Some of what I found was strangely… familiar.
So I thought I’d leave these here to help you determine if your PI, colleagues, university administrators etc. have perhaps mistaken this for an instruction manual for best practices.*
Under “General Interference with Organizations and Production”:
When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible—never less than five.
Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
Insist on doing everything through “channels”. Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
Haggle over precise wordings of communications, materials, resolutions.
Make “speeches”. Talk as frequently as possible, and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
“Misunderstand” orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.
Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.
Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything when one would do.
Act stupid.
Don’t order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted.
Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don’t get them argue about it. Warn that inferior materials will mean inferior work.
Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye.
Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.
Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.
Multiply paperwork in plausible ways.
No comment.
*For entertainment purposes only. All text directly from source material. Bad grammar not attributable to me.