October 9, 1991
Dear Everyone:
I'm back! (Hands, how many people noticed that I
was away?) I have returned from
two fun-filled weeks in “Livermore”, “Hobby” and “Oklahoma City”.
The first week in “Livermore” was your basic
12-hour days of trying to hammer the basics for using CRMIS into one
supervisor, one pretty sharp guy and one complete air-head whose primary
concern was her make-up bag which she refused to entrust to the airline,
then left at the Oakland airport, requiring a special trip to fetch it.
Fast-forward through the first week.
Week two:
Fly to “Hobby”, one of America's
largest outdoor saunas. Hot and
humid. Don't stand still too long
or moss will start to grow on your south side.
This is a place where it can be
pouring rain and still be in the upper 90’s.
Consequently, many of the downtown office buildings
have enclosed walkways bridging the streets.
It's possible to go from the Four
Seasons Hotel, through a shopping mall called the Park and into the
Company Tower (formerly the That Other Company Tower) without ever
leaving the air-conditioned comfort of modern urban technology, much
less setting foot on the ground. Since
it's connected, one way or another, to so many office buildings, that
Park does a flourishing business at lunch time.
We were actually only downtown one day, Wednesday.
Monday and Tuesday were spent in
southeastern “Hobby” where the Records Center is located.
Just as hot and humid, but you do
have to go outside from time to time. The
people from the “Austin” and “Lafayette” Record Centers had flown in to
join us for a series of conferences and meetings.
All very useful, informative and
boring.
On to “Oklahoma City”.
Just as hot, but much less humid
than “Hobby”. And less crowded.
At the height of the “rush" hour,
I counted maybe have-a-dozen cars as “Rowena” and I made our way
“downtown” to the Company building. The
two days in “Oklahoma City” were to be a follow up on the training we
had done in “Livermore” the week before.
The situation was pretty much still the same.
The sharp guy caught on to
everything on the first try. And
the air-head kept disappearing to go to the ladies room and paint her
fingernails.
Speaking of nails, my manicurist up and quit on me,
a fact I only discovered last Saturday when I showed up for my
appointment and she didn't. The
woman who owns the beauty salon said “Ruby” had decided not to work for
a few months. I decided that this
was a God-given opportunity for me to go back to natural nails.
I went home and sanded about 2 mm
off the ends, which is quite a lot when you stop to think about it.
My typing has already improved
considerably, even if my spelling hasn't.
In other news…
Company is experimenting with “alternate work
weeks”. This started with the Loma Prieta quake, two years ago, when a
lot of people had trouble getting to and from work because the Bay
Bridge was out. After the
emergency, CITC was asked to do a pilot project to see how well
alternate hours would work under “normal" circumstances. CITC, Company
Information Technology Company, is the computer branch of the company.
They always get to do the pilot
projects because they are largely populated by young people, fresh out
of college, who don't have a lot of preconceived notions and aren't set
in their ways.
As an instructor I had once put it:
“You can do things in CITC as a
matter of course that would get you keel-hauled if you tried it in CRC.”
(CRC is Company Resources
Company, notoriously conservative.)
So, for the past couple of years, CITC has had
people working for 10-hour days with a three-day weekend; people working
80 hours over nine working days, with a three-day weekend every other
week; people working four days in the office and one day “telecommuting”
from home. The reports have been
favorable. I've spoken with one
woman who said not only would she not go back to 5/8 (5 8-hour days), she
would no longer consider working for a company that
didn't offer alternate work weeks. Welcome
to the 21st Century.
Right now, it's only in the proposal stage.
And the whole work group has to
agree on the same schedule. I
can't see that happening in the near future.
All the same, I like the idea of
getting every Friday off. (Or
better yet, every Monday
off!)
Love, as always,
Pete
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