April 22, 1994
Dear Everyone:
The end of another long, busy week. I've
barely seen the inside of my office, what with training sessions,
learning about Spectrum, replacing a crashed hard drive on the Server,
"Career Enrichment", and learning more about Spectrum.
In the meantime, my regular work
piles up. Today, I got to turn
over the first of some of the things I will
not be taking with me to
“Livermore”, to wit: “Kevin” is
going to take over the weekly tracking of RACS statistics that will be
used to allocate our costs back to the customers in the future.
This could save me as much as an
hour each week. One down, 39 to
go.
"Career Enrichment" is a program that was actually started several years
ago. But then, the Company
started restructuring and "downsizing", and it seemed rather insensitive
to be talking about Career Enrichment at a time when so many people were
losing their jobs, so they put the program into mothballs until just
recently. (People who lost their
jobs due to downsizing, but found new jobs within the Company through
the Redeployment Pool are now referred to as "Redeployment Survivors".)
Now that things have stabilized, but with fewer opportunities for
advancement, people have begun to complain about being "stuck" in one
job (as if they weren’t lucky to still have one).
So they pulled the Career
Enrichment program out of mothballs (you can see where the moths chewed
on the packages, they're worn from being boxed up and shipped back and
forth so much). It's the usual
touchy-feely stuff from the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s, where you're
supposed to find out what your interests, skills and "values" are and
try to match them to a job where you can "Grow in Place".
Personally, I'm not looking for a new job.
I just
got a new job!
Which made filling out some of
the forms a little strange. It
was a case of, "Well, if I answer this question today, the answer is
’No’. But if I wait and answer it
in two weeks, the answer may well be ’Yes’."
How to Enrich a Schizophrenic
Career.
In other news…
“Jeannie” and I have not been
laying down on the job. We have
three movies to report on.
Greedy.
In a word,
Lousy.
Apparently, they couldn't decide
whether to make it a comedy, a farce, or a drama.
So they tried to do all three and
mailed fiserably.
The Paper.
Frenetic.
People working at a struggling
Big City Newspaper, racing against clocks, physical, emotional, moral
and biological. An absolute gem
of a performance by
Glenn Close. Everyone else
was good, too.
Unfortunately, we would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if it hadn't
been for the couple behind us who simply could
not keep their mouth shut for
more than two seconds. I'm not
talking about the occasional whispered remark.
I'm talking about a complete
running commentary on every aspect of every scene.
Why do people do this?
What's wrong with them?
I know that people have become
accustomed to talking during performances, the result of decades of
having a TV in their homes. But
usually, you just have to remind them with a "Shhh, please," that
they're not at home. Not these
people. Even after we asked them
repeatedly to "please, be
quiet!," they kept on talking. At
this point, you start debating with yourself about going out to get the
manager and having them evicted, thereby missing a large chunk of the
movie you paid to see and risking setting off a confrontation that may
disturb even more people around you then before.
In the end, we suffered through, resisting the urge to throw a soft
drink over our shoulders (you can't be that sure of your aim in the
dark). On the way through the
parking lot, after the show, I overheard two women talking as we passed
them: “…and he wouldn't shut up, even after those women kept asking him
to…", so I know we weren't the only ones they annoyed.
Unless, of course, those two women were coming out of a different movie
altogether. (I wonder what the
penalty for talking out loud during movies is in Singapore?)
Last, but not least,
Four Weddings
and a Funeral. Don't let
the title, the classy production values, or the fact that it's stuffed
with people you usually see on "Masterpiece Theater" and other high-brow
BBC productions, fool
you. This is
definitely a comedy. It's
about a "crowd" (about a dozen) of upper-class British friends who meet
each other over a period of months, always before, during and after a
wedding, or funeral. It's every
wedding disaster you've ever experienced, seen, heard of, or had
nightmares about, all rolled together into one hilarious package,
gift-wrapped.
If you do go to see it, let me know if you catch the "David
Cassidy" line. (It sailed
over “Jeannie's” head.) Just
remember the name of his
first hit song
and you'll understand.
If you're asking yourself, "Who’s David Cassidy?" forget I said
anything.
Love, as always,
Pete
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