March 1, 1990
Dear Everyone:
Payday!!!
Actually, yesterday was payday, but I was out of
the office all day so I only got it today.
What I really get, of course, is a “stub”, a sort of imitation
paycheck; the real one is directly deposited into my checking account, a
marvelous invention. No
standing in lines, no worrying about it if you’re off sick on pay day or
on vacation. It’s all done
with electrons.
Last Week, “Valerie Lowe”, who still works in my
old department, EL&P, called her family in Sacramento to give them the
news. The Good News is:
I’m not going to
“Hobby”… The Bad News is:
I have to start looking for a new job.
“Kevin” and I stopped by between meetings in
Company Park yesterday. Lots
of “gallows humor” there now.
They’re not pounding the pavement, looking for work yet – they
figure it will take the rest of the year to prepare and ship all of the
records they have to “Hobby”.
They’ll be employed at least that long and that will give them
time to try to transfer into other parts of the company.
As for “Hobby”,
they’re in a state of shock.
They aren’t losing jobs, they’re gaining all of Western Region’s
records. I once figured out
how much filing space we had in the
“Willoughby Files”.
It came out to 5½ miles of records.
Multiply that by the other filing areas (“twigs”, “earthquakes”, “lard”,
general correspondence, etc.) and you have quite a few tons about to
descend on the “Hobby” offices, plus the people who are being
transferred there.
(I hear “Hobby” has cockroaches the size of field
mice.)
On Tuesday, “Kevin” and I went on a tour of
“Administrative Nonsense”.
Evidently, all “new” employees are supposed to take this tour to
familiarize them (a fam-tour) with what
“Administrative Nonsense” can do for
them in the way of audio/visual aids, presentation slides, micrographic
services, reproduction, i.e., copy center, and so on.
Remember the “good old days” when you had to type a
mimeograph master (with no
errors) and run copies? Then
you collated, stapled, etc.
Today they have a copy machine that you can put your original into and
it spits out bound copies, complete with tabbed dividers.
Will wonders never cease?
In other news…
Last November, I accompanied “Alma” to a meeting
with “Justin Gonzalez” in CUSA “Winks”.
He wanted some help with his files (what else?) and I was
supposed to come along to give a demonstration of “IDHS”, in case
neither “Kevin” nor “Ashley” showed up.
In fact, both “Kevin”
and “Ashley” showed up, which means that I could have stayed home in bed
(I had the flu at that time).
After “Ashley” demo’d
“IDHS”, “Alma” and I took a look at “Justin’s” files.
It was more than obvious that this was one of those
file rooms where they never go through and cull out the deadwood.
I stood there with my Kleenexes and took notes while “Alma” and
“Justin” agreed that “Justin” could clean out the files to only active
records (during the Christmas season) and that “Alma” would call him
after the holidays to set up another meeting.
In a subsequent staff meeting, “Alma” told me to
add CUSA “Winks” to the Project Files, adding that the project was not
assigned to anyone yet – she would decide that later.
Last Monday, “Alma” informed me that 1) when she
said that she would call
“Justin” she really meant that I
would call him; 2) the project was assigned to me at the time.
This is “Alma’s” way of proving once again that she’s just a
silly goose.
So now I have a “new” project.
The Good News is: It
gets me out of the office, since it’s in the Park.
The Bad News is… actually, there is no Bad News about it.
The more projects you have, the more time you spend out of the
office.
In this regard, “Kevin” is going for some kind of a
record. He’ll be out of the
office every day next week except Friday, when we have a big staff
meeting with our manager, “Chris”.
Vacations don't count; the object is to schedule enough actual
work to keep you out of the office for a complete week.
Also, business trips don’t qualify.
It has to be here in the Bay Area.
(We make these games and rules up as we go along.)
Speaking of rules, after we watched those videos on
how to have more productive meetings, I set up a scoring system before
the next weekly “status” meeting.
We have this meeting every Friday morning, whether we need to or
not. Everyone starts out
with 10 points. (The number
of starting points varies according to the estimated length of the
meeting. This was a
half-hour meeting, so it was only expected to last about an hour or so.)
Each time you break one of the rules, you lose a
point. At the end of the
meeting, the one with the most points wins.
During this meeting I kept score on a little pad.
If you were late, forgot to bring your calendar (failure to
prepare), or “squashed” anyone during the meeting, you lost points.
By the end of the meeting, “Melanie” and I both had
10 points. (Of course, we
didn’t mention to any of the others that they were going to be “playing”
the game.) “Carla” had 9
points; “Kevin” and “Murray” had 8; “Rowena” and “Ashley” each had 7.
Don’t tell “Alma”, but she came out with –1.
I saw a great poster on someone’s wall at the Park
yesterday: “Don’t take Life
too seriously; you’ll never get out of it alive.”
Love, as always,
Pete
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