Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 53 (1998)

The workforce is losing its spirit, the B2s are losing business, George is losing interest and our hero is losing his grip.

Thursday 5th
Now is, indeed, the Winter of our Discontent. Our complaints about HQ using Notes to snoop on our daily worksheet summaries were met with the now-standard 'that's how they do it at Broadleys', plus a smirked suggestion from Llewellyn that we take it up with Chapman. Such is the climate of fear that Danny's offer to make the offending Notes FX fields read 'Mind you own business' was unanimously rejected, where once it would have served as a proud gesture of All Stars defiance. Meanwhile the Juveniles' cost/performance evaluation is said to be complete, and to contain some real bombshells. There is a bright side - June and Rose haven't complained about overtime for weeks, and Danny's actually been working. However the price, a workforce crushed in spirit, is a terrible one to pay.

Wednesday 11th
I meet the B2's Bill, who glumly tells me that their NetWare maintenance contract is up, and that Llewellyn is backing a switch to Broadleys' Notes installers, who also do Novell support. I tell him I'll see what I can do, but know that there isn't much, especially now that Llewellyn is firmly onside with HQ. Back at the ranch I find one of the Management Services Juveniles sitting in my office. I'm about to tell him to damn well wait outside in future when he asks me how synergistic I feel the roles of the Planning and Purchasing departments are. My blood freezing in my veins, I reply that 'complementary' would be a better term. He grins, tells me that I should find his report interesting, and leaves. Quelling my panic, I close the door and ring George to arrange an urgent off-site meeting.

Monday 16th
George and I are the Living Dead. The Juveniles obviously plan to merge our departments, with one - or both - of us ending up on the scrapheap, along with a swathe of our troops. However as managers it's our duty to protect our staff from anxiety by keeping them in the dark, so Mum's the word. George, in fact, seems remarkably relaxed about it all, commenting that 'que sera sera', and that he'd be better off out of it anyway. I, on the other hand, am petrified, but trying to remain calm. To occupy my mind I use my supervisor privileges to remove Danny's 'rent-a-stud' adverts from the Notes server, and stumble upon a lively Film Buffs conference in the officially-approved HQ Leisure list. I'm about to join, but then stop, reflecting sadly that there may not be much point.

Wednesday 25th
The bad news is that the B2's have indeed lost their NetWare contract, as evidenced by the arrival of two smart-suited engineers from Broadleys' contractors. Our dismay is tempered, however, by the instant eradication of the 5.45 Automated Backup Clash (something Bill said was technically impossible) and in June's case by the fact that the new men are, in her words, 'a lot tastier than the beer-gut brothers.' By now almost witless with waiting for cost/performance evaluation news, I quietly ask one of them if they've heard anything about merging departmental servers together. He looks puzzled and says no, but that he can fix the Notes log-on glitch that the B2s had previously deemed unsolvable. Realising that I'm losing my grip, I thank him and head for the canteen.

Tuesday 1st
The management meeting, our first for three weeks, is a near-riot, with demands for an end to unannounced Notes FX snooping and the immediate release of the cost/performance evaluation report. Llewellyn launches into his customary stonewall defence of the corporate position, only to be entertainingly wrong-footed by a conciliatory Chapman, who says we should have been consulted about the FX-bearing 1-2-3 templates and that it won't happen again. Sensing advantage, we press him about the evaluation report. This time, however, Costello steps in, saying that publication has been delayed while the board considers the implications of carrying out its recommendations. What he can tell us now is that there'll be no compulsory redundancies. For the rest, we'll have to wait until the report hits our desks on Thursday. The moment of truth is, it seems, just a few days away.