November 15, 1989
Dear Everyone:
It is my belief that if someone in Public Health
were to run a survey, they would find that the instances of colds and
flu in the Bay Area shot up significantly as of October 23, 1989.
This is the day that everyone and his brother started taking
BART
to work after the Quake. The
“Heart of the Bay” has a cold and so do I.
This is the second one in as many months.
Prior to that, I hadn’t had one in two years, so I supposed it’s
possible that I was due; but I wouldn’t have objected to being
“overlooked”. This one is
much “milder” than the last one, so I’m working through it instead of
staying home, sniffling, sneezing and coughing my way through each day
(I sound like a bull seal).
Frankly, I’d rather be watching TV, but there’s too
much going on here. “Kevin”
and I are going to be interviewing CITC’s Human Resources people
tomorrow and there is much preparation work to be done.
As this is “Kevin’s” first Active Files Project, it wouldn’t be
fair to leave him holding the bag.
He wouldn’t know what to do with it.
First, you set up an Initial Meeting.
This is where you meet the players and disillusion them about the
“Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo” Syndrome.
People often think that Records Management comes in, waves a
magic wand, says “Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo!” and overnight, they get a
beautiful, new filing system to work with.
Not so. We give them
advice and they (or temporary contract people) do the work.
Sometimes, this is as far as you get.
Once they learn that they’re going to have to work for it, they
decide they don’t need a new system.
But, assuming they’re willing to put some effort into it, you set
up interviews with the people who would be using the system (called
“users”) to find out what they need and want (not always the same
thing).
But first… you have to send a memo to the person in
charge of the group, telling them that you’re going to be interviewing
their people. Sometimes the
memo arrives the same day that you do.
This was (almost) the case with “Kevin” and me.
We had to get the memo out by Monday in order for it to reach the
head of CITC Human Resources before Thursday.
Bear in mind that the great Bridge-Fall-Down-Go-Boom got in the
way of the Company mail service, too.
I have no idea how mail from the City is reaching the East Bay.
Maybe they use Federal Express.
Anyway, before you can do the interviews, you have
to have questions to ask.
You use a questionnaire so that you ask all of the people the same
questions in each case. That
way you get a general cross section of the group.
As of today, we’re still getting the questionnaire
pulled together. I’ll finish
editing this afternoon and take it with me to Company Park in the
morning. (One of the good
things about doing projects in Company Park is that you can sleep in –
interviews, by tradition, do not begin before 9:00 – and eat breakfast
in the cafeteria.
We’ll be meeting people all day tomorrow.
This should give me an excellent opportunity to pass my BART cold
on to as many non-BART riders as possible.
We wouldn’t want them to feel left out.
If I live through the next two days, I’ll have the
weekend to rest up, except for setting up “Jeannie’s” sound system for
her. Hooking up the
components is easy. It’s
mounting those gigantic speakers high up on the wall (fuzzy cat thinks
they’re scratching posts) that gets a little difficult.
I hope everyone is in better health than I am.
Love, as always,
Pete
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