September 20, 1990
Dear Everyone:
It’s been a long, hard week.
A couple of managers got together (don’t you just hate it when
managers talk to each other?
It invariably means more work for us little guys) and decided that CUSA
Finance should review all of
their boxes in the Records Centers, not just the ones that have come up
for destruction review.
Since the canned report that produces these reviews was never designed
to do this, we’ve had to do some testing that “Eugene” and I did last
week.
A while back, “Ashley Holtz” and I met with some
CUSA Finance people to hammer out the details of this monster review.
“Ashley” pointed out that many people in Finance had already
reviewed their boxes, assigning Series to them according to their
Retention Schedules. A
Series identifies the type of document (such as Vouchers), how long it
should be kept in the office and how long in the Records Center.
When a box arrives at the Records Center, the computer looks at
the last date of record in the box, adds the retention period to it and
comes up with a Review Date.
When that date arrives, it’s time to destroy the box.
Unfortunately, this system is fairly recent and
many boxes went into the Records Centers (especially “Livermore” and
“Lafayette”) before Series were in existence.
In the before time, people used various formulae to compute a
Review Date: Add 5 years to
the most recent date of record in the box.
Add 5 years to today’s date.
Add 5 years to your own
retirement date (that way, you’ll be gone
when the box comes up for review and you won’t have to deal with it).
When all else fails, call the box “Permanent” and it’ll never
come up for review.
Consequently, a lot of boxes have unreasonable review dates.
This is why we need people to review their boxes.
At 360,000 maximum capacity, “Livermore” is the largest Records
Center. And it will be full
by the end of the year.
Boxes keep coming in, not enough boxes are being destroyed.
It’s called the “overflowing Bathtub Syndrome”.
Pretty soon, boxes are going to start spilling out onto
I-580 and
jamming up traffic.
Why pick on CUSA Finance?
They’re the single largest owner of boxes in “Livermore”.
They’re the accounting department and they produce tons of paper
every day. Ever buy
“product” from a Company store?
There’s a piece of paper, probably more than one, with your
account number on it and it’s probably sitting in a box in “Livermore”.
I once did a bar graph to illustrate how many boxes
each Operating Company had in “Livermore”.
CUSA Finance stood out like the
John Hancock Tower set down in a
bunch of bungalows.
So I’m having to go through the review batches and
separate them into boxes that have Series and boxes that don’t; and if
they have Series don’t review them; and if they don’t have Series review
them even if the Review Date is in the year 2001 and the whole thing is
giving me a headache. It’s
also making my feet hurt, since I do a lot of this standing up.
There’s another reason for them to review all of
their records: Starting
January 1, 1991, we’re going to charge owners $0.38 per box per month
for storage costs. (The
$0.38 may vary a bit. I
think I overhead the term $0.35 bandied about.)
So, if you had 155,000 boxes in “Livermore” (not counting
“Hobby”, “Casper”, “Austin” and “Lafayette”), how much would a year’s
worth of storage cost you?
More than my
Christmas budget, that’s for sure.
As for how we’re going to go about charging all
these owners for their boxes, that’s my latest new Project, as of
yesterday morning. I’m going
to be representing
Records Management on a Project Team with CITC
(computer people) and accounting people to build an entirely new
charge-back system. “Alma”
and “Ashley” told me about it just before lunch.
Don’t these people realize I can’t even balance my check book?
Still, it’ll look great on my resume.
“Jeannie” and I decided to get
really radical last weekend and
not go to a movie.
Instead, I borrowed a
video tape from the company Learning Center.
It’s called What You Are Is Where You Were When.
It’s presented by Dr.
Morris Massey, who was teaching at the
University of Colorado when the film was made in 1975.
It’s never made clear just what Morris taught:
Behavioral Psychology?
Sociology?
Ichthyology?
Anyway, Morris talked a lot about how your value
system is determined by where and when you grew up.
“I’m a bigot,” says Morris.
“Prejudiced as hell.
I value-processed in Waco, Texas.”
It was at this point that “Jeannie” became
hysterical and we had to stop the tape until she could stop laughing and
we could hear what Morris had to say.
Plus, it was time to heat up more bagels.
Some people find Morris “grating”.
They don’t like being told that they’re programmable, like a
VCR.
Others find him disturbing, or just plain obnoxious.
“Jeannie” and I find him hilarious and we’re looking forward to
borrowing some more of his tapes soon.
Love, as always,
Pete
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