May 25, 1990
Dear Everyone:
Thought for the day:
Never stand downstream in a Company Building at 11:30 am.
You’ll get trampled.
“Downstream” is defined as anywhere along a line of
sight between the elevators and the lobby exits.
11:30 is the time that everyone in Company goes to lunch.
Everyone. 53,000
employees worldwide and they all
go to lunch at 11:30 am, albeit local time.
This means that at 11:30 the elevators begin to disgorge
hundreds, thousands, of people all heading for the exit.
However, if you happen to be trying to get
from the exit/entrance
to the elevators, well,
salmon have an easier time getting upstream to spawn.
The add to this basic problem, Security puts out ropes to channel
people through a bottleneck so that they can check everyone’s badges as
they go in and out of the buildings.
At least salmon aren’t required to verify access before they
start up the Columbia River.
And then there are the elevators themselves.
At any other part of the day, the elevator doors seem to wait as
much as five minutes before they will close.
But at 11:30, they’re on some sort of timer to shut in 30
seconds. No, I don’t think
there are gremlins in the elevators.
I think the gremlins were hired as outside consultants when the
elevators were designed.
So, as I said, the trick is to get
upstream of an elevator before it opens (guessing which one will
open next is part of the game).
As people come pouring out of the elevator, try to stick your arm
in far enough to block the door from closing, then slip in quickly as
the last person exits. This
usually works.
It’s all part of the charm of working in a major
urban environment.
This will have to be a short Letter today.
I spent the whole morning (lucky me!) with “Ashley Holtz” and we
have to reconvene right after lunch to finish before his 1:30 meeting.
We have been taking an inventory of all the PC’s that we have in
Records Management and what versions of software they have.
For those of you who might not know, the people who
create and market software programs (and hardware for that matter) are
constantly improving their systems to better service the community and
so you’ll have to buy the New-and-Improved version so as no to be out of
date. In fact, if you ever
buy a software system, and read the manual (when all else fails, read
the directions), you’ll notice that the first thing they tell you to do
is to unlearn some of the things you learned to use the earlier version
of the same thing.
Each time someone in our group needed a software
package, one would be installed and they got whatever version was for
sale at the time. This is
why the DOS (Disk Operated System – what you need to make everything
else work) in our PC’s run from version 2.1 (ancient) to 3.3 (fairly
recent).
“Ashley” was assigned to be our PC Coordinator, a
job he tried to get out of, but “Chris” wouldn’t let him off the hook.
Whereupon he insisted that he couldn’t do it all alone and “Alma”
volunteered me to help him.
So we’ve been running directories and getting lists of who has what
software packages in their PC’s and how out of date they are so he can
order the new versions. When
the new ones come in, we’ll spend a Saturday installing all of them and
getting everyone’s PC up to the same levels.
So far, “helping” “Ashley” has consisted of sitting
at the keyboard and typing in what he tells me.
I don’t see why he can’t just do the typing himself.
But it has been very educational.
Now I know a lot more about how little I know about computers.
Not that “Ashley” is the one to be learning from.
“Melanie” once told me that “Ashley” told her that he’d been
working with computers since the 1960’s.
Before I could put a curb on my tongue, I popped out with:
“Oh, good! Then he’s
just stuffed with obsolete information.”
“Ashley”, like so many of us in the modern world, knows just
enough to be dangerous.
On the home front…
I think “Jeannie” has done an excellent job of
training her ducks. Last
week, we went to see
Gone With the Wind.
When we came out of her apartment, and the ducks spotted her,
they all came gabbling across the pond.
Some, not wanting to wait for slow traffic, took wing to get to
her as quickly as possible.
To them, “Jeannie” is the Earth Mother Goddess, the
wonderful being who feeds them bread and (sometimes) popcorn.
She actually goes out and buys bread exclusively for them.
Up they come to her stairway, eager to greet her and,
incidentally, to get a free hand-out.
But we were on our way out and had no freebies.
Furthermore, she doesn’t allow them on the sidewalk as they tend
to leave a ducky mess on the concrete.
“Get off the sidewalk,” she said, gently but
firmly. And they gabbled
back onto the grass.
“Nothing right now.” And,
disappointed, but still polite, they gabbled their way back into the
pond.
As a reward for their good behavior, “Jeannie” took
back a full container of popcorn from the theater with her.
After all, a goddess must take care of her constituents.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |