Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 75 (2001)

Previously in Group Efforts:
An era ended as Finance Director Tim Costello left the company for a six-figure position at a merchant bank. His successor, Neil 'Slasher' Barrett, arrived with a reputation for ruthless cost-cutting and rumours of past grief between him and MD Chapman over disk drives in East Anglia. All was quiet at first, but it was the calm before the storm. At his first management meeting, Barrett announced a company-wide Total Cost Rationalisation Programme, and named the two trusted henchpersons who'd be helping him enforce it -Cathy Reeve and C. J. Llewellyn.

Now read on, as the Stores are insolvent, Joan's inconsolable, the Pie's inedible and Llewellyn's in big trouble…

Wednesday 9th
We live in terrible times. Total Cost Rationalisation is upon us, and anything that isn't nailed down is having its cost/performance ratio analysed, in most cases leading to the imposition of something cheaper or its disappearance altogether. Little is seen of Barrett, as the spadework is all being done by his hit squad, led by Llewellyn, of whom no-one expected any better, and Cathy, whose betrayal of the All Star cause remains a bitter blow.
Their latest victim is Solvents Stores, a place where Llewellyn once feared to tread but which he now swaggers around, threatening to 'have a word with Neil' if he doesn't get cooperation. Despite their lack of solvent storage expertise, he and Cathy have managed to devise an energy-saving plan based on time switches for the tank heaters. Ted Hawkins says it'll end in disaster (something to do with emulsification), but Cathy says it'll save 15% on power costs, and in the present climate that's all that matters. The Barbarians aren't at the gates any more; they've broken through, laid waste to the outlying sheds, and next they'll be coming for us.

Monday 14th
An All Stars lunchtime strategy meeting, venue Peg's. Andy says we should increase our costs as much as possible, so that Barrett can slash them, claim big savings, and leave us back where we started. It's a nice idea but, as Kay Bridges points out, a risky one, as two managers from Barrett's previous firm would testify if they weren't too busy seeking alternative career opportunities. Another option is to stand our ground and hope that Group top brass will see sense, but Amrat squashes that one with a depressing account of the HQ perspective. Times are hard, and cost-slashing in the subsidiaries boosts short term profits without damaging Broadleys' core business. In short, we're expendable.
Back at the Ranch, I find a team of I.T. footsoldiers attacking our PCs with screwdrivers and chip-pullers. Looking on are a furious Rose, June and Sheila, an attentive Danny (already in possession of a stray chip-puller, which I instruct him to return), and an embarrassed-looking Spark. He says they're engaged in 'memory redistribution', a new alternative to memory upgrades which involves robbing Sheila's machine to bring Rose and June's up to Office XP spec.
I point out that Sheila's PC is now below Materials Monitoring spec, but Spark just looks mournful and points to his clipboard. This in fact contains a copy of 'Vert Skating Monthly', but its hurried removal reveals the Executive Order, signed by Barrett himself. We've had our chips - or, more accurately, Barrett has.

Thursday 17th
Something I never thought I'd see - Joan 'Magnum Force' Davis genuinely distressed and crying her eyes out. Apparently the Watford A project manager rang in and, finding Cathy unavailable, vented his fury on Joan instead about the load of cheap fixings, ordered by Purchasing, which are now failing on a daily basis at Watford and earning him serious grief from the client. Touchingly, Joan's tears result not from the PM's colourful language, but from the shame of seeing her department bring the company into disrepute. She says this would never have happened in George Barker's day, and never was a truer word spoken.
To cheer her up I invite her to the canteen, where it's Shepherd's Pie day, the All Stars' favourite. Eileen seems strangely reluctant to serve it to us though, and we soon find out why. In place of the wholesome, meaty goodness that's fuelled generations of comrades, we get a greasy, gristly mess that's barely chewable. I tackle Eileen, but can guess the answer anyway - cheap meat, the result of cost cuts demanded by Barrett (who, I notice, lunches elsewhere). Apparently the savings work out at 18.6p per portion. That's more, it seems, than the value of a well-fed workforce.

Tuesday 22nd
I've attended all the momentous management meetings of recent years, from the Dorking Biggie emergency session, with Roger Brison's chair dramatically empty, to the announcement, by an ashen-faced MD, of our takeover by Broadleys. Nothing, however, has prepared me for today's session. All humour and goodwill gone, it's pure venom, as manager after manager berates Barrett for the insanities of his Cost Rationalisation Programme. Barrett sits impassively through it, and waits for his last accuser (Kay, with dire warnings of the effects of halving our training budget) to finish before launching his counter-attack.
He says we need a dire warning ourselves - of the firm's total collapse if we don't recognise the need to trim the fat and make ourselves competitive. I say that we've competed pretty well so far, and on quality rather than cheapskate pricing, and he says that goes to show how out of touch I am, and what a threat the 'complacency mindset' is to the firm's survival.
Llewellyn and Cathy sit smugly each side of Barratt, nodding as he makes his points. Chapman doesn't nod, but is oddly silent, which Andy later judges to indicate that times at HQ must be very hard indeed. After the meeting Barrett comes over to me, and I half-expect him to apologise for his 'complacency' jibe. Instead he says that with my length of service I qualify by right for Broadleys generous early retirement scheme, and that perhaps I should think about it. I think about doing something else altogether, but manage to restrain myself, and leave.

Friday 25th
It's our turn for the Inquisition, and our Inquisitor is Llewellyn himself. He begins with some corporate-speak nonsense about the need for constant cost evaluation, and we then go through the motions of him demanding 20 percent savings and me saying it simply can't be done. He's just reached the 'other options are available' threats when my phone rings. It's Amrat, and when I say I'm busy he says I'll really want to hear what he's got to tell me. He's right, and such is my stare of astonishment that Llewellyn asks me if I'm OK. I say I'm fine, avoid his eye, and, pleading an urgent, forgotten appointment, postpone the rest of our session.
In the canteen the talk is all of Solvents Stores, where two tanks have emulsified overnight due to insufficient convection. Ted's triumphant, but the word is that Barrett's going to use it as an excuse to shut the Stores altogether and outsource solvents to a 'cost compliant' contractor. I've got some very interesting words of my own but, honouring Amrat's request for confidentiality, keep quiet.
Then, just when I think I can remain confidential no longer, Matt bursts in holding a memo, freshly torn from the notice board, which confirms what Amrat told me earlier. It seems that while Llewellyn's been out doing Barrett's dirty work, Barrett's been doing some secret cost evaluations of Llewellyn's own I.T. department. The result, astonishingly, is that it's ceased to exist, replaced by an outpost of Group I.T. managed directly from HQ. Such is the shock of it that it takes the assembled All Stars a good half-minute to think of the obvious question, but when they do, I've got the answer. It's incredible, but it's true; C. J. 'Houdini' Llewellyn, Master of Escapology turned Barrett's Chief Cost Enforcer, has been Cost Enforced himself.

Next in Group Efforts:
Can this really be the end for Llewellyn? How will Spark cope with life as a directly-managed outpost? Who'll be Cost Enforced next, and do solvents really emulsify due to insufficient convection, or is Ted Hawkins just stirring things up? Find out in Episode 76, our specially extended Group Efforts Season Finale!