March 4, 2004
Dear Everyone:
After three weeks, I think I’m finally shaking this cold. And my back is much better as well. When I saw “Jeannie” last Sunday, she was still under the weather, but she sounds better now, too. Let’s hope that’s it at least for this quarter.
Things have been pretty quiet at work this week. That’s largely because I’m the only one there. Our supervisor has already been reassigned and is off at her new job down in “Pleasanton”. The “acting” supervisor is in “Hobby” for two weeks. One analyst has been in “Hobby” for so long that management has decided to make it official and actually move her there.
Others are at various customer sites.
I have customers, but one project, having to do with
electronic
engineering drawings in the
document management system, has people all over the
Bay Area
and
You might think that, since I live in San Ramon, and there’s no one else in the “Pleasant Hill” office, that I would just find a place to work in “Pleasanton”. And I would except for a couple of things. 1) If no one is in the “Pleasant Hill” office, no mail gets delivered. Just today, a bunch of mail arrived, including two cell phone bills for two different people.
And something from a computer company addressed to one of our contractors who is currently working in “Hobby”. The envelope was addressed to her in “Hobby”. But the helpful mailroom people looked her up and determined that she works in our “Pleasant Hill” office. Which she does, except that she’s at a customer site in “Hobby”. So they scratched out the “Hobby” address and sent it to “Pleasant Hill”. Since I was there today, I was able to contact her and find the name of a customer in “Hobby” that I could forward the already-forwarded mail to.
This is even more fun near the end of a project. The mail is sent to the customer site. But the helpful mailroom people send it to the base office (“Pleasant Hill”, for now). It sits around until someone notices it and forwards it back to the customer site. In the meantime, the contractor, or analyst, has left the customer site and is headed back to the base office. “Ships that pass in the night…”
That was 1). 2) space in the “Pleasanton” offices is tight and getting tighter. A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by someone in another group about how she was being evicted from her cubicle because yet another group needed that space. (This person and one other officially work in “Livermore”, but it’s more convenient for them to work in “Pleasanton”.) So Person Number One was moving back into an officially “unoccupied” two-person office.
Person Two, finding that space occupied the next Monday morning, elected to use the office that is officially assigned to our just-removed supervisor. When I got in, I took the second desk in the two-person office. When Person Three showed up, there were no spaces left. She wound up taking over a “common area” small conference room. Person Four wasn’t even that lucky.
All of us falling over like so many dominoes, each bumping the next one out of a possible working space. Sort of like musical chairs, but with desks and no music. Last Wednesday, when I again needed to be in “Pleasanton”, I ended up taking over an unoccupied cubicle with no chair.
So, unless I need to be in “Pleasanton”, I commute to “Pleasant Hill” where I am guaranteed a desk. And a chair. And places to store things so I don’t have to drag everything with me. Also, the San Ramon to “Pleasant Hill” commute isn’t bad, particularly by Bay Area standards. It’s what’s called the “reverse commute” meaning that the vast majority of cars are heading in the opposite direction. I usually spend only about half-an-hour in the car each way.
In other news…
Not much happening. Haven’t been to the movies in quite a while. “Jeannie” and I get our hair cut this Saturday and have hopes of spending some time Sunday working on her new computer. My getting sick delayed all the improvements we had planned, like installing a new computer-assisted transcript program for shorthand reporters. It’s a newer version of the one she uses now on the old computer. We’ll see how it goes.
Love, as always,
Pete
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