July 12, 1989
Dear Everyone:
Meetings, meetings, meetings…
I have meetings coming out of my ears. Last Monday, we had two scheduled meetings and one unscheduled one. The first meeting was to discuss how we should prepare for the meeting that we’re having next Tuesday. This is not a pre-meeting meeting; that’s the meeting that we’re going to have Thursday afternoon. This was a pre-pre-meeting meeting.
The second meeting Monday was to discuss how we’re going to handle the “Enabling Technogiggles Department’s” request for help with their Active Files. In this meeting we made a complete, 180-degree, turn around from what we had decided in the last ETD meeting. We are now going to do exactly the opposite of what we said we’d do before. All of this, and it wasn’t even lunch time yet.
After lunch, we had another, unscheduled, meeting to learn the name of our new manager. He is one, Gary Wolff, from Corporate Auditing. We also learned the name of our new Analyst, whom we have been calling Daniel. He is one, “Kevin Polse”, who works in CUSA EL&P) (“Company USA, Exploitation, Lard & Privateering”). If that sounds a little familiar, it should: “Kevin” currently has the exact same job that I was working in before I left to come to Records Management.
Tuesday had only one meeting: a presentation of Star Quality, the name of a new employee suggestion system. The idea is that if you come up with a suggestion that improves productivity, cuts costs, helps morale, you’ll win a prize for it. Everything from a magnet to a ball point pen, to a T-shirt to $500 and dinner for two. However, certain suggestions are automatically considered ineligible, such as personnel/benefits and parking (the “Pleasant Hill” office has one parking space for every three employees). This cuts out a lot of “suggestions” that are really complaints about co-workers and bosses and effectively nips in the bud the suggestion that first springs to mind: Fewer meetings.
After Tuesday morning’s meeting, I was free to spend the rest of the day working on “Exploitation’s” Retention Schedule which I needed for a meeting Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, all of the printers in San Francisco went on strike (Major Gremlin, here) and I spent a frustrating afternoon trying to get my report out of the computer before it was time to go home. I got it, just barely, with about 5 minutes to spare.
This morning I had one meeting with “Heidi” and “Keith” in CITC at Company Park. This was to discuss “Heidi’s” work on some data from RCCS that hadn’t worked the way it should. Remember RCCS, the Record Center Control System that we inherited from “That Other Company”? I spent most of last year working on getting the data from RCCS into the new CRMIS system. Now RCCS has reared it ugly head again. (We forgot to drive a stake through its heart.)
“Heidi’s” meeting was mercifully short and “Valerie Lowe” was going into a meeting of her own, so I was able to drop off the “Exploitation” Retention Schedule and take the 9:45 shuttle into San Francisco. This is how I’m able to write this week’s Letter today.
Tomorrow is the regular Thursday-Morning-Meeting-That-Will-Not-Die. Then tomorrow afternoon is the pre-meeting for next Tuesday’s meeting which is to give “CITC” an overview of just what it is that Records Management DOES all the time (between meetings).
Friday afternoon I have a meeting to discuss (that word again!) Destruction of records and then no more meetings until Monday.
No wonder my head hurts.
“Marshall” is coming up this weekend to see a Giants game and spend Saturday night at my place. I’m looking forward to it.
Ever eat at Jack in the Box? (Because of this morning’s meeting in “Pleasanton”, I couldn’t bring in my usual diet lunch and had to go out for it.) You get in line, give your order, pay for it and then go stand in another line while they go out back and kill a cow. This is another of my complaints about “fast” food. If they can’t get it into my hand in under 3 seconds, they’re too slow. What a high-pressure job THAT must be.
Love, as always,
Pete
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