February 18, 1999
Dear Everyone:
More knuckle-biting and nail-chewing at the office.
The price of “subject” has dropped and isn’t really expected to
improve for a couple of years.
Consequently, our CEO has called for a $500 million cut in costs
by the end of this year.
“Cost-cutting” usually translates into “people-cutting”.
So far, they’ve announced a new joint venture with
“BearCo” in the
Permian Basin, which probably means closing the “Austin” office.
Bye-bye, “Austin” people.
(If you’re wondering where in the world “Permian Basin” is, it’s
not a real place. Once upon
a time, there was a large depression in what is now central
Texas.
Over the centuries, it filled up with sediment, which eventually
turned into “subject”. That
turned into a large set of “subject places”, commonly referred to as the
Permian Basin because the rock there comes from the last period of the
Paleozoic Era.
Now aren’t you glad you asked?)
Next, they announced that Company is pulling out of
“Santa Anita”, California.
This is a major research and testing facility that’s been around a lot
longer than I have. At least
some of the “Santa Anita” folks will relocate to either Company Park or
the “Martinez” plant. It
will be interesting to see what happens to the town of “Santa Anita”
after Company leaves.
Another favorite way of cutting costs is called
“outsourcing”. This goes
something like: “Why are we
running our own copy centers?
We’re an xxx company, not
Kinkos®.
We’ll pay someone else to do the copying for us.”
Bye-bye, copy people.
Services are regularly examined for possible
outsourcing because they provide such a juicy target.
Why pay for salary, benefits and overhead (also known as
“burden”) for mail and file clerks if you can use contracts instead?
And where do I work?
In “Boredom, Percolators & Systems”.
That’s right, everything we do is “service”.
Records
management is a “service”.
Purchasing, managing and dispensing forms and supplies is a
“service”. Finding and
checking out a book from the Library is a “service”.
Doing internal and external research for someone is a “service”.
And overseeing the software applications that people use to
perform these services is a “service”.
This could tend to make a person more nervous than
a long-tailed cat in a room full of
rocking chairs;
but I figure, why waste time worrying about something you have no
control over. Just fluff up
your résumé and get on
with the daily business.
Speaking of which, they’re shipping me off to
“Hobby” and “Idaho Falls” in a couple of weeks to take a look at the two
software applications we’re considering as a replacement for
Versatile.
I’m to see them in action with current customers of the two
vendors to try and get a better idea of which product will best suit our
needs, assuming we’re still in business in a couple of months.
One might surmise that the Powers That Be wouldn’t
waste money on business trips if they didn’t know that we would, indeed,
be replacing Versatile.
But the truth of the matter is that the Powers That Be don’t know
that I or Versatile even
exist. It’s the local bosses
that want me to go ahead with the trips.
They know that a few hundred dollars in airfare and hotel bills
won’t amount to a drop in the bucket of money that Company is determined
to save.
Meanwhile, for the third weekend in a row,
“Jeannie” and I failed to get out to see a movie.
Part of the problem is timing (the
Super Bowl, the
ARMA video) and part is the absence
of films we want to see that are playing where we want to go.
Example:
Waking Ned
Devine looks like a fun film (although it may work better on
video when you can say, “What’d he say?” and rewind the tape to
compensate for British accents).
But it disappeared from the
Dublin
theater just last week.
Saving
Private Ryan is playing a ten minute walk from my place, but
I’ve already seen it and “Jeannie” doesn’t seem inclined.
I’m hoping we can agree on something next weekend.
After that, I’ll be in the air (literally) for the next two
weekends and it will be mid-March before we can try again.
Assuming I still have a job to support my movie-going habits.
Keep a good thought.
Love, as always,
Pete
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