May 31, 1990
Dear Everyone:
There are four kinds of homicide:
Erroneous, Felonious, Justifiable and Praise-Worthy.
(Ambrose Bierce)
Killing “Alma” would definitely fall into one of
the last two categories, depending on how many of my co-workers testify
as to her atrocious manners and total incompetence as a supervisor.
Two days ago, she wanted me to produce a list of
Destruction Batches that had come out of the “Tiddly Department” since
the first of November, 1989.
This was so she could show “Chris” what a great job she had done of
getting “Tiddly” to review Destruction batches more quickly.
I pointed out to her that many of these batches had
been all the way through the Approval Process and sent on to the Records
Centers. For this reason, I
had not included them in CRMDATS, the Company Records Destruction
Approval Tracking System that I had set up.
If she wanted all of
the other batches included, I would have to key them in before I could
extract the information she wanted.
She said to go ahead and do it; so, instead of
doing all the things that I had planned to do last Tuesday, I spent the
entire day (except for when “Alma” interrupted me with other things)
keying in information and doubling the size of the data base and
finishing just in time to catch my van.
Then I spent nearly all of Wednesday morning (yesterday) sorting
the data and extracting the records where the date “Sent to ‘Winks’” was
11/01/89 or later. The
reason I sorted on the “Winks” field is that it comes right after the
“Tiddly” field. If it came
out of “Tiddly” on 11/01/89, it was sent to “Winks” on the same or next
day.
OK. I
got the report printed and into “Alma’s” office 10 minutes before she
was supposed to meet with “Chris”.
And bear in mind that this was all old data, culled from
hand-written pages so the data available to me was incomplete.
This morning, I got in to find my report on my
desk, literally covered with
notes from “Alma”. At the
bottom of the first page, she wrote that “Chris” was “impressed” with
the report; and then she proceeded to make upwards of
211 “corrections” on 5½
pages, mostly things like the Records Coordinator code (which I didn’t
possibly have time to look up in each case) and what date it went to her
to be signed (something the old system didn’t record).
Nit-picky little details that had
nothing to do with the
purpose of the report. And,
by the way, I noticed, before I blanked them out, that “Tiddly” finished
a lot more batches before
11/01/89 than they did after it.
So I’ve spent all of this morning producing more
reports (muttering expletives delete-able under my breath) so that
“Jane” can look up all the Records Coordinator Codes and so “Alma” can
fabricate “dates” that she got and signed batches on boxes that were
destroyed over a year ago.
Hmmph!!!
On a more cheerful note, I did manage to get one
worthwhile thing done this morning and that was to order the airline
tickets and hotel reservations for “Jeannie” and me to go to the Annual
Star Trek Celebration in Los Angeles June 23-24.
This is a biggie:
Even Gene Roddenberry, the creator, will be showing up.
Not to mention every actor and bit player who can make an
appearance.
And dealers from around the
world (lots of useless souvenirs).
A trip to the United Federation of Planets will do wonders for us
both.
Back in the real world:
We’re recycling like crazy around here.
Somebody got the great idea to put special boxes next to the copy
machines (there are at least 3 on every floor) for recyclable paper.
The first week, I noticed a maintenance worker going around with
a cardboard box, emptying the recycled boxes into it.
I asked him if we could get a second box to go near our laser
printer, which produces even more recyclable pages than the copy
machine. Then “Chris” caught
on and sent each of us a smaller box that sits on your desk, exactly the
right size to go under your telephone, so it doesn’t take up any extra
desk space. When your little
box gets full, you take it down the hall and dump it into the big box
for pickup.
This is great because, with all the computer
printouts that I receive, I can easily fill up my little box a couple of
times a week. As for that
maintenance worker, the last time I saw him, he had traded his cardboard
box in on a great, big dumpster on wheels.
And it was full.
Love, as always,
Pete
PS. I may not get a chance to do a Letter next week, if the 5-day class that I’m scheduled to be in does, in fact, go forward. We won’t know until tomorrow afternoon. Typical. P.
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