May 18, 1990
Dear Everyone:
What started out as a blissfully quiet and
productive day (rare) sort of blew up on me about 9:30 this morning.
Of the eight of us in Records Management, 3 are on vacation, 3
were in meetings and I was in the Display Room, placidly spreading my
“Dierdra Holland” Mess out into neat little piles of what I can do about
it and what I can’t.
“Dierdra Holland” is in “Hobby” and is busily rearranging her entire
Records Retention Schedule which means a lot of computer time for me
once I figure out what to do with everything.
This is something I inherited from “Murray Olson” when he went to
“Livermore”.
You’re right:
3+3+1 doesn’t equal 8.
The last one is “Murray” who is in “Livermore”.
Anyway, what this all means is that when our manager, “Chris”,
tried to call someone in Records Management, all of our phones were on
forward to ASPEN. ASPEN is
the Automated Speech Enhancement Network, a software that takes
messages.
“Chris” didn’t want to leave a message; he wanted
to talk to a live person. So
he called his old secretary from the job he had before this one.
It just so happens that “Corporate Authentication”, “Chris’s” old
stomping grounds, is on the floor directly above us.
So his former secretary came down looking for “Alma”, who is on
vacation, found me instead and delivered the message:
Call “Chris”. Now.
Well, it seems that the “old boy network” has been
at it again. Some guy in
CUSA went on a visit to the “Jackson” refinery and ran into some guy who
says that they’ve been sending requests for authorization to destroy old
records for about 6 years now and Records Management has yet to respond
to them. This may, of
course, be a slight exaggeration.
On the other hand, it may not.
So, this guy talks to “Chris” who calls “Alma”,
who’s not there, and gets me, the lowest and littlest guy on the totem
pole. As it happens, I do
know a little bit about “Jackson” because any authorization for
destruction has to go through my Company Records Management Destruction
Authorization Tracking System, or CRMDATS, for short.
(Pronounced:
krim-dats.) So, I told
“Chris” what little I knew, including the news that “Alma” was on
vacation, and he wants me to let her know
first thing Monday morning that he wants to know what’s going on
with “Jackson”.
You can guess what’s going to happen
second thing Monday morning.
“Alma” is going to want, at the very least, a list
of all Destruction Batches for “Jackson” including their status.
So I’ve been busily getting all my “Jackson” ducks in a row so as
to have the answers before she starts asking questions.
This is called foresight and planning, something Analyticals do
well and Expressives do maybe once every blue moon.
As you will no doubt recall from some previous
Letter, I spent an entire Saturday in the office about a month ago,
setting up CRMDATS.
Actually, CRMDATS is simply a rather complex document in WordPerfect.
Now that all the basic information is in the document, I can sort
the data by such things as dates, numbers of boxes, and what Records
Center any boxes are in. In
theory, all I have to do is sort the document by the Records Center
field and all the “Jacksons” will fall out together and I can just print
the particular page that they happen to land on.
HOWEVER, this may an opportunity to let “Chris”
know what a great job I can do, so I’m fixing up the bells-and-whistles
to make it look better.
We’ll see how well it works on Monday.
ACRONYMS
We have lots of acronyms in Company, CRMIS, “IDHS”,
CRMDATS, and so You just
make up a name for something and then call it by its initials or parts
of each word. For instance,
CREMCO stands for Company Real Estate Management Co.
Of course, we could just call it CREM, but CREMCO is easier to
pronounce.
(Come to think of it, “Frankie” is an acronym for
Frankxxx. So her kids can
honestly say, “My mommy is an acronym.”)
Of course, acronyms can get you into trouble if
you’re not careful.
Sometimes, they’re just unpronounceable, like “IDHS” which can only be
said, I-D-H-S. On the other
hand, I recently heard about a system being used by Medical to keep
track of when and how much people are off the job because of illness or
injuries. This was called
the Safety & Health Information Tracking System.
I understand that this name lasted about a day and a half before
somebody realized what the acronym would be and quickly changed Tracking
to Management and SHIMS was born.
I have a project coming up (initial meeting with
“Sue Fuller” of CITC on Monday, if “Jackson” doesn’t shoot it out of the
water) that will involve tracking who in Records Management is working
on what project. This
started out as a “Star Quality” suggestion that I had made to make it
easier for me to find out who is responsible for which Records Retention
Schedules. “Alma” has since
added keeping track of Active Files projects as well and seems to want
to tie the whole thing into the PEP system which is one of my worst
nightmares (PEP is).
Until we come up with some cute acronym for this
new system, I am calling it the Active Files And Schedules System.
It seems appropriate.
On the home front, Spring Cleaning struck last
weekend. I washed the
windows in my condo and my
car. Now, I know for a fact
that I have washed the condo windows at least once since I moved in 3
years ago this coming Memorial Day.
I just can’t say when exactly.
I guess it’s been a while, judging by how black the paper towels
were afterward. But what’s
the point of washing them in the winter?
It’s dark when you go to work and dark when you come home, so why
bother looking out the windows.
The last time I looked, they didn’t
seem very dirty.
Well, anyway, they’re clean now.
Good for another 3 years.
Honestly, I do clean fairly regularly, even the
floors.
OK, OK, it’s true:
I’m still on my first bottle of Mop’N’Glo.
But, hey, it was a fresh bottle. When I
moved out of the Walnut Creek apartment, I left all the cleaning
supplies and tools there and bought new ones for myself.
Including the hammer that “Jeannie” immediately lost and had to
replace.
No, I don’t know how it wound up in her lingerie
drawer. My guess is,
gravity.
Love, as always,
Pete
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