Love, As Always, Pete

The Weekly Letters, by A. Pedersen Wood

September 20, 1989

Dear Everyone:

My good buddy, “Betty”, in “Corporate Authentication”, let me use her memory typewriter, so I was able to run off some more mailing labels.  I used the last of the ones I had the week before last.  Now I have enough for 12 weeks, so please don’t everyone move in the next 12 weeks.  1 or 2 is OK, just not everyone:

 “Corporate Authentication” is an interesting group because they don’t work for the Corporation.  It gets a little sticky if the people who are supposed to be “authenticating”  you also work for you.  So “Corporate Authentication” works for Company Services, Inc.  CSI is a very handy little group.  Many states, like Texas, have laws prohibiting companies that “belong” to other states (such as Standard XXX of California) from doing business in their state.  This doesn’t phase “Company” any; they just go ahead and make up a new company like CSI which is not a “California” company.

 Of course, it can be a little confusing when you’re trying to assign Retention Schedules and you can’t find departments because they aren’t where they “should” be; but we’ve learned to live with it.  It’s sort of become a catch phrase:  “I can’t find… “  “Try looking in CSI.”  Kind of like when I was living with “Jeannie”; if you can’t find the TV Guide, salt shaker, napkins… try looking in the freezer.

 “Jeannie” is here now.  She arrived Sunday night, just before 60 Minutes.  At 7:45, she announced, “I miss my cat!”  She’ll be here for about 3-4 weeks, then head up north for a Convention in Canada.  She is already working and looking at real estate ads.

You may have noticed that there was no Letter last week.  The reason is not because I had run out of labels.  Actually, typing more labels was on my list of “things to do” for last Tuesday.  Problem was, I wasn’t at work last Tuesday.  I wasn’t at work at all last week.  I was home all week with a cold.  I thought about writing a one liner:  “I have a cold this week.  Details after the movie.”  But I decided that that would mean sending my germs all over the countryside, and that didn’t seem like a good idea.  Now that I’m feeling better, it still doesn’t seem like a good idea.  I’m glad I didn’t do it.

 Besides, who wants to hear the details about someone else’s cold?  Disgusting, right?  Right.

In other news…

I have two new projects as of Monday.  “Kevin” (the new guy) and I are going to work on them together.  One is CUSA Marketing in Houston.  (CUSA, for those of you who didn’t keep their Glossary of Company Terms, is Company USA, Inc.)  Marketing is one of the most convoluted of groups when it comes to who does what; so naturally, their filing system is convoluted as well.  “Kevin” is going to be in “Hobby” next month, giving demonstrations of “IDHS”, so he will stop by and take a look at their file room.  Aside from that, this will probably be a “telephone, fax and PROFS” kind of project.  Everything by phone or electronic mail.  Unless we can convince “Alma” that we really, really need to go to Texas.

The other new project is CITC Human Resources.  Theirs is a familiar tale:  Once upon a time, they had a filing system that worked.  But the person who managed the files disappeared (“non-essential personnel”) and no one could find anything so no one sent anything to be filed which was OK because there was no one there to file it and now everything is in people’s office and no one can find anything can Records Management come and make it better?  People do seem to have the idea that we just come, wave a magic wand, and a perfect file system springs up overnight, like Jack’s Beanstalk.

 Aside from living in a dream world, this group looks like a good candidate for “IDHS”, which is “Kevin’s” specialty for now.  And, as I’m going to be his backup, working together on this project should help us get some of the bugs out of the system.  More importantly, CITC (Company Information Technology Company, i.e., computers) is located in Company Park which is not as far away as Texas, but which is on the other side of the Bay from our offices in San Francisco.  These little “field trips” make a nice break from the routine.  And Company Park has a lovely cafeteria.

My work on “Enabling Technogiggles Department’s” files was finally starting to get off the ground when I was grounded by that cold.  On the other hand, it may have been ETD that gave me the cold since I worked all day Friday with them – and woke up Saturday with a sore throat, etc.  By the time I got back into the office this Monday, they had merged with another company.  Now I don’t know what’s going to happen.

 Oh well, at least I got to watch about 9 movies on the VCR while I played couch potato.  I just hope “Jeannie” doesn’t catch any residual bugs since she’s sleeping on the same couch.  So far, so good.

 

Love, as always,

 

Pete

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