November 10, 1988
Dear Everyone:
Great election! Who won?
I spent nearly 4 hours last Saturday, studying the issues. I gathered all of the propaganda which had piled up on the dining table and sorted the measures into numeric and alphabetic order. Then I studied each of the issues; the arguments in favor of the proposition; the arguments against the proposition; the rebuttals to the arguments. After 39 separate measures, each with four arguments for and against, I felt like a mental ping pong ball.
We had everything from school bond issues to whether or not to suspend the constitutional rights of rapists, child molesters and people who bite cops. There were four initiatives alone dealing with trying to control the insurance companies. Contra Costa County had not one, not two, but four (4) propositions for where to put the garbage dump.
Once I had studied everything carefully, I got out my sample ballot (17” x 22”), sharpened a good pencil, made an informed decision and voted Yes on odd numbers, No on even numbers and Yes on any measures with letters that occurred in my name.
And, when in doubt, always vote against the incumbent. If they were doing a good job, you wouldn’t be in doubt, would you?
In London, they were saying: “If God had wanted Americans to have an election, He would have provided them with candidates.”
In other news…
“Hobby” destruction is just about wrapped up. I found one little group of eleven boxes that had been overlooked; but I took care of it and eight of them will soon be going to that Great Record Center in the Sky. The other three got caught in the dreaded "Tiddly's" Trap.
“Livermore” destruction is moving along nicely. Some boxes have actually made it through "Tiddly" and gone on to "Windks". "Winks" is more specific about their holds; if they can’t point to a specific case as a reason for holding a box, they’ll let it go. Bear in mind that there are nearly 321,000 boxes in “Livermore” and more coming in each day, so we really need to clear out some deadwood.
I got a new project this week: “Happiness, Ecology & Theft Prevention”. More commonly known as HETP. So far, we’ve only had an initial meeting and it’s up to them to decide if they want us to help them fix up their files. Like everyone else, they inherited a lot of files from “That Other Company” and their manager has decided that it’s time to integrate them into the file system. I don’t know what his hurry is; the companies merged only four years ago.
I managed to get a lot of the RCCS/CRMIS discrepancies figured out to the extent of directing “Livermore” to change the series numbers on the boxes so that they will match. At any rate, I can’t do any more until “Livermore” gets back to me, so RCCS is on hold for now.
This means that I can finally get back to work on PEP codes, something I’ve been ignoring since the end of August. Nobody is sure what PEP means, but the general consensus is “Pay Equals Performance” which is a joke in itself. Payroll accounting uses PEP codes in making out people’s paychecks. We’ve “borrowed” their system to keep track of departments and their boxes in the records centers. The idea here is that as long as someone in the department is being paid, they’ll have a PEP code. That way, we don’t get “orphan” boxes when a department, or even an entire company, ceases to exist.
This organization is in a constant state of chaotic change. Companies appear out of nowhere, change, combine, reform. Sort of like pond water under a microscope.
Every time one of these changes occurs, Payroll makes a change in the PEP system. Unlike the mail room, the people who really know who’s coming and who’s going are in payroll. Each week, the computer automatically spits out a list of these changes. I’m supposed to check these changes against our system to see if we need to make adjustments.
But I’ve been busy with other things and I haven’t got around to it since the last week in August. I’d better get cracking. Whole companies may have come and gone while I wasn’t looking.
(Don’t anybody tell Dad that I voted for Dukakis. OK?)
[Our father was a died-in-the-wool Midwestern Republican.]
Everybody pray for rain and lots of snow in the mountains.
Love, as always,
Pete
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