Love, As Always, Pete

The Weekly Letters, by A. Pedersen Wood

February 12, 2004

Dear Everyone:

We got “rommed” today.

Like most groups, there’s a whole lotta restructuring going on.  Everyone is looking for ways to reduce costs; and the fastest way to do that is to cut people.  They used to call that “layoffs”.  When that fell out of favor, the term “downsizing” became popular.

Back when I was working in San Francisco, the company went through a large downsizing phase.  It was reported in the immortal Herb Caen’s column in the Chronicle that certain unnamed employees had hired a voodoo priest to place a curse on the CEO, causing his “attributes” to “downsize” in proportion to the company population.

In due time, “downsizing” became unpopular and was changed to “rightsizing”.

The newest fad is called Resource Optimization Management, or “ROM” for short.  It took less than a week for “rom” to become a verb.  “Where’s Fred?”  “He got rommed.”

So our Information Management group is being restructured.  The manager’s direct reports were rommed last Friday and the new organization chart was released the following Monday.  Most of us were rather surprised to see who got which jobs in some cases.  What seemed the most obvious choice to us obviously didn’t look that way to upper management.

On Tuesday, the managers and supervisors got together for ranking.  This is an annual ritual that takes place in February.  It’s what determines what, if any, salary increase each employee will get next April.  On Wednesday, they rommed the non-exempts (lower salary classifications).  Today, they rommed the exempts (higher salary classes).  That would be the group that I’m in.

I always imagine all the managers and supervisors sitting around a huge table, moving people around like game pieces on a gigantic board.  The ones that fall on the floor are the people who will learn that they no longer have a job.  Or, if they’re lucky, only their job went away and there’s a place for them somewhere else in the department.  Fingers crossed all around.

In other news…

I finished signing a gazillion forms for my refinance loan and turned them in yesterday.  I have only one more form, having to do with my Homeowners Association, to complete.  Since the HOA Board will be meeting next Wednesday, I’ll take the form with me.  The property manager will be able to answer all the questions and any other member of the Board can sign it for me.  Apparently, you can’t sign it yourself, even if you are a Board member.

“Jeannie’s” up in Oregon, visiting Mother and helping “Alice” wrangle her two girls.  In the meantime, I have both of “Jeannie’s” laptops, the old one and the new one.  I’ll be installing some new software on the new one.  Then I’ll transfer as many of her oldest case files from the old machine to the new one as possible.  This is done using what’s known as the Sneaker Network.

You copy files from one computer to a diskette.  Then you put on your sneakers and run with the diskette to the second computer, put the diskette in and copy the files to the second computer.  Only I won’t be needing sneakers since I can set the two machines up side by side in the living room and watch DVDs all weekend while I pass diskettes back and forth.

“Jeannie” is due back next Monday, which is a holiday, so I’ll be able to pick her up at the airport.  And some time next week, we’ll all find out if we still have jobs and what they’ll be.  Keep a good thought.

Love, as always,

 

Pete

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