March 24, 1989
Dear Everyone:
Busy, busy week.
Lots of interviews with the “Political Manipulation” people to find out what kinds of records they have. We use the questionnaire format because it ensures that we ask all the people the same questions. Later we’ll compare the different answers to get an overall picture of how the department functions. “Rowena’s” taking vacation next week, so I’ll be continuing the interviews on my own.
Also in the works is the dreaded Schedule Rewrite Project. Dreaded because there’s a lot of in-fighting going on over what, exactly, we want Schedules to do for us. “Ashley Holtz”, the Project Administrator, wants to set it up so that a manager can establish and control the schedule used by his underlings. This is called the Master Org / Sub-org Scenario.
The trouble is, One-Size-Fits-All retention schedules don’t work in the real world. “Melanie” and “Rowena” found that out when they tried to use it for “CUSA Finance”. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare to keep track of all the sub-orgs and sub-sub-orgs. Remember, this is not really a Company; it’s pond water under a microscope.
But “Holtz” doesn’t live in the real world. He lives in a lovely sort of Never-Never-Land where the computer will do all the work for you. He’s convinced that the reason the Master Org / Sub-org Scenario doesn’t work is because the computer system wasn’t designed to handle it.
(Actually, the computer system wasn’t designed to handle a LOT of what it’s trying to do. That’s why we’re rewriting it.)
He wants the computer set up so that we can use this Scenario. We keep telling him that it won’t work; but he can be very hard of listening. Each time we vote against it, he brings it back up with a little variation intended to fool us into thinking it’s something new.
As “Murray” says: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a Master Org / Sub-org.”
Anyway, we’ve been meeting every Thursday afternoon the past 2 months to work on it. But starting yesterday, the times of the meetings has been changed to every Thursday morning. So I’ll have to find a different day to write my Letter. These meetings invariably go past the beginning of the lunch hour.
Think about this, people. I’m talking about meeting every Thursday morning from now until the beginning of September. Assuming, of course, that we don’t get delayed. September is only a target date.
This is one reason why I’m taking this course in How to Negotiate. So far, it doesn’t seem to be a good class to recommend for my department, but I’m picking up some very useful tidbits on how to manipulate people and things. And how to avoid being manipulated.
I pretty much figured that I wouldn’t get to my Letter until today. I knew by last Wednesday that it would have to be re-scheduled. I sort of planned on doing it today.
But I forgot something. The Post Office has this funny, little quirk: They insist on envelopes. With stamps.
SO, I’ll have to take the copies home (where the envelopes and stamps are) and send them out in tomorrow’s mail. Sorry for the delay.
Unfortunately, there will be no refund.
Another thing that came up in yesterday’s meeting is the Destruction Review. We want the computer to do as much of the work as possible. Like generating the cover letter and the authorization form that go with each report. Trouble is, before the computer can do “all the work”, you have to do a lot of work yourself, such as explaining, step by step, what you actually want the computer to do. Remember, the computer will always do what you TELL it to do, not always what you WANT it to do.
So guess who gets to figure out all of these steps? Right. Meet my cohort, “Ted Palmer”, the new kid at "CITC". We’ll be working together, me in San Francisco, he in "Pleasanton". This is possible through the miracle of computers. I write my stuff on VM and shoot it out to him. He looks it over, adds his comments, and shoots it back to me. We’ll probably also get together (in the same place) at the Thursday meetings.
In other news…
As I took Monday as a vacation day, I was able to see 3 movies this weekend, paying only the bargain price each time.
(My plan to clean my condo that weekend sort of got lost in the shuffle.)
The 3 movies were: Leviathan, Working Girl and Rain Man.
Leviathan was your basic Alien-type horror flick. Hostile environment outside (bottom of the Atlantic Ocean), good guys and monster inside. Unless you have the hots for Peter Weller, or can’t wait to see Amanda Pays in her underwear, let this one ride until it reaches a cable-service near you.
Working Girl is a variation on Cinderella, with the Girl acting more or less as the prince charming (with a little help from Harrison Ford). Sigorney Weaver makes a delightful dragon.
Rain Man is about Dustin Hoffman trying to get an Academy Award as an autistic savant. We’ll know next Wednesday if he succeeds.
Of the 3, I liked Working Girl the best. I came out of it so up (Carly Simon’s music helped a lot) that I went home and rode 10 miles on my bike.
The odometer on my bike now reads 6920 miles.
Love, as always,
Pete
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