September 2, 1994
Dear Everyone:
The big news here at work is, of course, The Restructuring.
I know, I know, this isn't the
first time we've been restructured. In
fact, I believe that hidden, somewhere in the fine print of the Company
Charter, is a rule that says that every Operating Company and Department
must restructure at least once every "X" number of months, whether it's
needed or not. Maybe one of the
Founding Fathers had an interest in a business card printing shop.
A while back, we'd heard that our Big Boss, the head of “Boredom
Percolators and Services”, had decreed that each of her Direct Reports
(i. e., people who report directly to her) should present his or her
best ideas for restructuring the department.
Bets were made as to whether the
re-organization would be along functional lines or geographic ones.
A week ago last Wednesday The Big Announcement was made and the "new and
improved" organization chart was released.
From where I stand (on a
very low rung of the ladder), the new structure doesn't look that
much different from the old one, which means the people who bet on
geographical lines beat out the ones who favored the functional ones.
However, there were a
few significant changes.
For instance, as of yesterday, “Ken” is no longer our manager.
We have a new boss to break in.
What's more, she brought another
group with her. We are no longer
"Forms and Records Management". We
are now "Forms, Libraries and
Records Management".
Personally, I'm totally in favor of anything that brings books and me
closer together, even if the actual library
is over in Company Park.
I'm sure we can find some sort of
Systems Analysis for me to do, once the crunch with
Versatile
and Spectrum is out of the way. Say…next
summer.
Speaking of Versatile, we're
getting down to the wire. The
deadline for making a formal recommendation to either stay with the
software, or pull the plug and ask for Company's money back, is in about
two weeks. My Team agreed that we
haven't been able to spend nearly
enough time on the Project, so we're going to take over the RACS
conference room next week, drag a PC in, locked the door, and stage a
full-scale assault on Versatile, going through every screen, figuring out the steps for
every procedure and basically learning everything we can inside and out.
Total immersion.
Of course, inevitably, someone will come knocking at the door with a
plaintive "I know you're terribly busy,
but…"
But if all five of us yell,
"Get out!!!" loudly
enough, they might take the hint.
In order to be ready for this onslaught, everyone on the Team will need
hard copies of all the screens in
Versatile, so they can write notes and use them to remember things
later. To this end, I plan to
spend this weekend working on said screen copies.
This means spending Saturday in
“Livermore”, going from screen to screen and drawing a sort of "map"
that I can translate into graphics that I can print for everyone.
Of course, I can just tell the computer to "print the screen", but what
happens is that the screen uses special symbols that the printer doesn't
understand. So what looks like
this on the screen:
|
FUNC: BOXM |
|
Oeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)^???aaaaa|||||??@@@??
:FUNC: BOXM
CE
Ca^aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa??
Which can be a little confusing for people to read.
So, I'll spend Saturday getting
the information I need to render the confusing parts more legible.
Of course, working in “Livermore”
on a weekend is not the hardship that you might think it to be.
They have a big screen TV and
VCR (for educational
purposes, of course) that I can roll over to my office.
With over nine dozen tapes at
home to choose from, and a
Blockbuster
Video across the street from where I live, the only real problem
will be:
Oh, heck. Why not all three?
Love, as always,
Pete
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