Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 55 (1999)

The department is upgraded, Amrat is tugged, our hero is honoured and everyone is shocked.

Tuesday 5th
The holiday's over, and it's time for three weeks of frantic effort as we prepare for the combined Project Resources department to go live. Most of this is directed at the PR super-application, whose pre-Christmas teething troubles have blossomed into serious design issues which Amrat is hounding the B2s to fix. Cathy, meanwhile, is hounding Amrat over the insufficient training time 'her' staff will now have, and I'm hounding Cathy over her ineffective hounding of Amrat, just to show willing. The only smiling face belongs to George, who's taken to arriving in a quilted waistcoat with 'Barker's Garden Centre' on the back. He is, however, performing his handover duties impeccably, and already has Cathy fully up to speed on the Purchasing Tea Club. A true All Star, professional to the last.

Monday 11th
The hot canteen topic is who will succeed the Old Man as Managing Director. Andy's joint favourites are Costello (well established) and Chapman (Broadleys man), with 5/1 on the loser taking an early bath afterwards. George, however, says it'll be an outsider, which we all favour as it would starve Llewellyn of pre-appointment brown-nosing opportunities. Bets hedged, I return to find the ranch filled with large boxes, which Amrat informs us contain our new PCs. I ask what new PCs, and he says our new department has been awarded a clean-sheet intranet infrastructure installation (or LAN kit, in old money). They're IBMs (of course) and look very smart, although Sheila says they'll show the dirt. Amrat, meanwhile, says we'll have two weeks interconnect time to transfer our files, with his help. Perhaps it really will be a brave new world after all.

Thursday 14th
Officially, George said goodbye at the firm's mega leaving-bash, but his real farewell is a members-only gathering at All Stars HQ, Peg's Snug. He's on top form, embarrassing Andy with tales of his management trainee days, and leading the team in a rousing chorus of our Anthem, the Health and Safety notice sang to the tune of 'Men of Harlech'. Then he calls for order, announces that I have now succeeded him as Father of the All Stars Chapel, and, to my astonishment, hands me the mug, bearing our main competitor's logo, which he personally captured during our takeover of the Bromley Wood project in 1981. It is the proudest moment of my life, and I fight back the tears as I accept the great Symbol of Office. My speech gets a round of applause, and I get a round of Peg's finest, to round off a truly wonderful evening.

Wednesday 20th
My new IBM PC is a 300GL (which Andy says sounds like a Mercedes with Ford trim) and is less powerful than I'd expected. Amrat says that's because it's 'thin', although it looks quite chubby to me. Danny has discovered that you can remove a 300GL's system case without any tools, but has been told, not entirely truthfully, that its Enhanced Asset Information Area EEPROM records the date and time of each unauthorised entry, along with the trespasser's fingerprints. Meanwhile Rose and June like the keyboards but not the mice, and Cathy says she doesn't care as long as the machines run 'her' Project Resources super-application. Amrat, however, is curiously slow to confirm this, which doesn't escape my fine-tuned management antennae. We exchange glances as he slips away, and I foresee stormy times ahead.

Monday 25th
The Project Resources Department is now live, although still running separate Purchasing and Planning systems due to the continued unreadiness of the super-application. I'm about to tackle Amrat about the delay when Cathy appears and literally drags him away by the ear. I decide to pull rank and drag him back, but am pre-empted by a red alert call from Andy, who says to meet him at the notice board straight away. Pushing through the scrum, I see a memo entitled 'Appointment of Managing Director'. I quickly find the all-important name, then stand, like my comrades, in open-mouthed disbelief. Seeing Andy, I ask if it's a hoax, but he says his sources confirm that it's true. The new MD is, incredibly, Roger Brison, our once-disgraced finance director, now back to rule us all.