So the new robot (Dingo) arrived yesterday. Today I did the unboxing, and damn was it disappointing. I realized the university purchased it not from the company I recommended, and they messed up the delivery.
The robot controller was missing, and the charging cable did not match the charging station input. Like dude, you had one job!
Since the lady in administration decided to disregard my recommendation and order from a random shop, she might as well assemble the robot herself....

At least it is the correct robot... Or is it?

Isn't it great how you make an effort and someone just randomly nukes the effort and instead gives you more work...

Not.

@electrineer It looks like the right one, but I am hesitant to commit at this point....

@IntrusionCM Every.Single.Time. I am crying for my future self, because this hobby shop probably doesn't have support for this product, while in the company I recommended there was a person of contact for assisting with installation and stuff.

And that’s probs because it was $10 cheaper, in a product that likely is priced north of $500

@dder So from the documents I saw, the purchase the uni made was actually more costly than the offer I handed in. And the price for that toy is around 18,000 euros.

I mentioned this to my post-doc and he barked at me that it's not my place to question how the administration does the purchasing. Right....

"So the new robot (Dingo) arrived..."

...ah, I know exactly who posted this, it's a robot doing really cool stuff, bet it's doing amazing things already!

"The robot controller was missing"

...oh.

Pack it up and say that the delivery was not correct. Don't give it to the vendor and go only through the administration.

@NickyBones have you found out what the post-doc gained from changing the supplier? because ordering more expensive option from a less respectable vendor while saying "administrative did it/don't question them" sounds to me like he got some unofficial benefits

@qwwerty I think he personally did not gain anything, but someone in the administration definitely did.

I apologize for generalizing all German people, but my impression is that Germans get super snappy and hostile when you question their bureaucracy/procedures, so this is why the post-doc was so harsh.

@stop Ideally yes. But the administration is slow and not very helpful. This robot might stay in its unusable state until I graduate my PhD, if it's up to them :)

@NickyBones oh no need to apologize.

But in most cases everyone _hates_ the bureaucracy and nepotism...

Germans have the very sad tendency to bark a lot, but having no bite.

Meaning: You most likely got yelled at because the person knew that admitting making a mistake means more of bureaucratic process - so instead of doing the right thing TM, bark instead of biting the administrations ass.

I'm pretty sure that that person later complained a whole lot about how troublesome all the bureaucratic stuff is...

@IntrusionCM Apparently the post-doc went to my professor and told him he doesn't want to supervise me anymore.

Not that he was supervising me before, because his domain knowledge is totally irrelevant to what I am doing, but he definitely poured serious amount of shit on me.

@NickyBones *sigh*