May 3, 1989
Dear Everyone:
I have spent the morning slaving over a hot keyboard, working on “Political Manipulation”.
No, this does not mean that I’m going to save the world from George Bush’s puppies. It means that the people who work in “CUSA Public Manipulation”, subdivision “Political Manipulation”, asked us to help them with their Active Files which are in a true mess.
We interviewed about 15 people, asking questions from a set that we had put together. Sometimes I talked with one or two people. Sometimes “Rowena” did. Most of the time we went together (safety in numbers). Now we have to compile the answers. But when we worked together, we both wrote down the answers from the same person. This means that I need to find my notes on a person and match them to “Rowena’s” notes and sort of blend the two together so we end up with one answer per person.
Naturally, I’ve been using the computer for this. If there’s a way to do something on the computer, I’ll find it. I’ve made up a file for each question. In it I list a person’s initials and their answer to the question. Once I have the files made up, I can sort on the initials and bring the double-answers together. Then I can sort of merge “Rowena’s” notes and mine into something more or less intelligible.
Thus, file #17 looks something like this:
CAL – Yes.
JJC – No.
CIH – Yes.
DKH – Occasionally.
SES – Gloria.
PMB – No.
DLL – Haven’t in this job.
MJS – Mail people do it.
Right now, these answers may not seem to make a lot of sense, but that’s because you can’t see the question which is in another file. This particular question is: “Do you routinely send files to the Records Center?” Once I have all the answers squared away, I can go to the file that has the questions and plug in the lists of answers. Easy.
Of course, all of the answers boil down to one: “I think that a centralized filing system is a great idea for this department… Of course, it doesn’t pertain to ME. MY files are different.” Of course.
Moving right along…
We had a major “informal” meeting with the “Enabling Technogiggles Department” (ETD) out in “Grey Farm”. “Grey Farm” is a business park in “Pleasanton”, near Company Park. The reason that ETD is renting space in “Grey Farm” is that Company Park, which was supposed to take care of office space needs into the next century, is stuffed. No more room. (Who’s in charge here?)
Anyway, after our major “informal” meeting with ETD, we had another meeting last Monday with the person in charge of their Central Files. (In addition to Central Files, these people have some 25 “satellite” file areas where they keep things that they don’t send to Central Files.) My assignment is to help them get their files ready to input into “IDHS” in August. So, while “Alma” and “Melanie” went off to meet with some of these “satellite” people, I settled down with the File Index, which consists of 2 large binders, plus another binder for cross-references.
If you ask these people if they send files to the Records Center, the answer would have to be: Not much. I’d find a likely looking file, like “Leaves of Absence”, in the Index, then I’d go putter off to find the folder and see if it had anything interesting in it. (This is the very first, exploratory stage.) I found a letter in “Leaves of Absence” from a man who had asked for 6 days off without pay to spend time with his family at Christmas. It seems that his request was denied on the grounds that Leaves were for times of distress (such as a death in the family) and if he wanted to spend Christmas with his family he should use vacation time for that. His response was that it was only a hundred and such years ago the Scrooge grudgingly gave Cratchit Christmas Day off and he thought that the company should have a more modern attitude towards leisure time, angrily yours…
It was dated 1957.
In another file I found a memo announcing that the San Francisco Board had realized that too many people were working in the city, overworking the public transportation system. This one was dated 1942. I was tempted to leak it to the press to show how little things have changed, but restrained myself. The purpose of the memo was to announce that the company was changing its office hours to 8:00-4:30. I hadn’t realized until now that the reason we’d always worked those hours was to help the war effort!
Needless to say, these people need some guidelines on how long to keep what and when to throw it out. They have blue tops (company announcements, printed on paper with a blue border at the top) going back to 1977. This make sense. I believe 1977 was when the company started sending out blue tops. Most people read them and throw them away. These guys save them for all eternity.
I have my work cut out for me here.
With all of these meetings and changing my Letter day to Wednesdays, we’ve sort of let the weekly game of Trivial Pursuit fall by the wayside. It’s probably just as well. In the last game “George Murphy” won with the question: “Who was Tasmania’s most famous swashbuckler?” I figured he’d never get it, since most people don’t know that Errol Flynn was born in Tasmania.
He got it because Errol Flynn was the only swashbuckler he could think of. So much for Robert Shaw and Douglas Fairbanks!
Love, as always,
Pete
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