Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 42 (1997)

Scandal on the IntraWeb and a campaign veteran's reunion, while Cathy's career develops and so do the rumours.

Monday 6th
The week kicks off with an all-team meeting to discuss how we're going to cope with Reading B. Danny suggests ignoring it altogether, Rose and June suggest copious overtime, and Cathy suggests we put Hounslow clearances on hold until Reading's through contracts. I congratulate her on an excellent idea and put her in charge of it. She thanks me for having confidence in her, and the others give us both strange looks. Later Danny's Win 95 Registry forgets, yet again, that .doc files belong to Microsoft Word. Cathy calls Amrat, mentions 'your damned Reog program', and the lad is round in 90 seconds flat. Praising Cathy's decisive action, I invite her to take ongoing responsibility for I.T. fault rectification. She says it'll be a pleasure, Danny appears to faint and we all troop off for lunch.

Thursday 9th
At the management meeting Llewellyn announces a competition for the best Christmas IntraWeb site. This, we're told, is an excellent opportunity to enhance groupwide inter-departmental dialogue, although George says it's really a desperate attempt to stop Costello from cutting Llewellyn's leased line to Glasgow. Lewd content, disk-wiping ActiveX controls and mention of the Battle of Culloden are all banned (to Andy's evident disappointment), and the MD's decision is final. Llewellyn smugly points out that with Amrat in the authoring seat, I.T.'s definitely on pole position. I say that I'll probably put Cathy in charge of our efforts, which for some reason elicits smirks all round. Ignoring them, I head off to tell her the good news.

Wednesday 15th
An email arrives from Andy announcing a reunion meeting of the Democratic Suites Decision Society, which was launched 18 months ago this week or thereabouts. In the Society's Inner Temple (prop. Peg) we agree that, while the Suites Menace has receded, we must remain ever vigilant against attempts to undermine our traditions (i.e. replace 1-2-3 with Excel altogether) and that Llewellyn is far from being a spent force, especially now he's seen off Bill Campbell. Our guest speaker, the B2's Bob, gives a short talk on 'resisting the spread of NT Servers', and we discuss the importance of instilling our accumulated wisdom into our juniors. Someone comments that I'm good at instilling things into younger staff, and everyone laughs. Enjoying the bonhomie, I order another round.

Tuesday 22nd
A scandal has erupted over the Christmas IntraWeb competition, with Solvents Stores claiming that I.T.'s pages, glimpsed during secret field trials, use a high-performance animated reindeer graphic developed by them. This, they say, is the result of I.T. snooping on their source files, an unforgivable betrayal especially after the way they nurtured Amrat's early authoring career. The canteen view is that I.T. have definitely been at it, and Andy has temporarily replaced his competition pages with ones that read 'Keep your noses out, you cheating bastards.' I.T., meanwhile, are insisting that departmental source directories are completely secure, although Danny's offer to procure a copy of Transport's site (rumoured to be hot stuff) makes me think otherwise. Our pages are now stored in a password-protected ZIP file, and restored to Cathy's PC only when her network cable is unplugged.

Friday 31st
At our morning videoconference, Alan asks how Cathy's career development is going. I say fine, and that she'll be ready to leave the department by Easter. Later Danny complains that Cathy won't let him contribute to our Christmas IntraWeb pages. I say that's probably just as well, and he replies that he knew I'd side with my girlfriend. Demanding an explanation, I discover, to my horror, that the whole building thinks Cathy and I are engaged in a clandestine relationship (or 'having it off', as Danny puts it), with my sudden praise and encouragement of her prima facie evidence of guilt. Stricken, I phone Andy, who confirms the rumour, adding that he doesn't know how I manage it at my age. Sensing that a denial would be useless, I hang up and start wondering how on earth I'm going to get out of this one.