Let me tell you about Jennifer. Not her real name, but it will do. Jennifer was once in charge of a government office which she micro-micro managed in every way. Although she was the supervisor, she insisted on taking every phone call, and had her desk placed at the entry to the room so she could personally screen every person who entered. If someone was foolish enough to walk past her and proceed to the desk of a staff member, she would either come up and ask what they wanted, or, if intimidated by their appearance, she would wait until they had left and then ask the employee who they were, what they wanted, etc. If someone had the temerity to phone an employee directly, which was what was supposed to happen in that office, she would leave her desk and stand by the employee's desk asking questions while they were trying to talk to the caller. Jennifer had absolutely NO common sense, No management skills, NO real supervisory experience, and NO formal management or business training, although she was in charge of two college graduates, two people with years of experience in the type of work done, and one young lady who had started in the section as a clerk but who had shown such diligence, dependability and intelligence that she had worked herself up to the number two slot in the department. I'll make the method by which Jennifer got the supervisor's job the subject of another article some day. No, it's not what you think. One day Jennifer called one of her staff, I'll call him Bob (I always pick on Bob - not his real name either) over to her desk. She handed him a folder and told him he was now in charge of doing the monthly copier report. This was a red flag to Bob, because he knew she didn't turn loose of anything unless something had gone wrong. As she gave Bob (who had run offices as big as Jennifer's) a detailed set of incoherent instructions, she finished with the admonition that because the section had recently acquired a different copier, the reporting technique had changed somewhat, and she had asked the copier rep from the business equipment to write down a complete set of instructions which Bob was to follow. To keep this as short as possible, Bob was in a hurry, so he simply plugged the numbers into the set of instructions he had found in the folder and learned to his surprise that the copier which supplied the needs of about a dozen people had made over one million copies in one month. Looking back over previous reports in the folder, the copier usually made between 1,000 and 2,000 copies a month. Bob went back to the written instructions, and this time he paid attention. One of the reasons he hadn't paid that much attention previously was that the information was being collected for a government form. Bob worked with one govenrnment form monthly (which Jennifer had also assigned to him) which was unbelieveably complicated, required data to be interwoven and broken out into new figures. Bob was an accountant who had been responsible for the finances and reporting for multiple offices and entities and had never seen anything so useless in his life. Anyway, when Bob had been told to follow the written instructions, he had just assumed in the back of his mind that some bureaucratic rat somewhere had devised another hopelessly complicated form in the expectation of preserving his or her position - the most common purpose of a govenrment form, especially the complicated ones (Don't believe me? Look at the tax code and explain its purpose and function in life to me, please!). Anyway, as Bob perused the documents before him, it came to him in a flash what had happened. Two months previously, the office had acquired a new (refurbished) copier. The report for the first month of operation had been filled out with no problem. However, there were all kinds of notes, scratchings, and erasures for the next month, and that was the clue. Here's what had happened. When delivered, the refurbished copier had a counter that was in the high 900,000's. At the end of the first month of use, Jennifer had been able to subtract the count at delivery from the count at the end of the month and come up with an accurate number of copies. However, during the second month, the counter had reached its maximum of 999,999 copies and had clicked back to zero. When Jennifer had read the starting count for the month (999,xxx) and had subtracted it from the ending count (001000), she had arrived at a negative number, a HUGE negative number, and had been totally unable to account for it. As Bob pieced the rest of the story together later (by talking directly to the copier rep), Jennifer had called the copier people and complained that the copier counter wasn't working. That's when the rep had explained that you had to subtract the beginning count from one million and add that number to the number on the counter at the end of the month. However, the rep had assumed that Jennifer was a normal person and would figure out that this procedure only worked when the counter had reset itself. Little did HE know! Jennifer had assumed that with this new copier, this would be the way to do all reports in the future. When she followed the rep's instructions to the letter and got figures in the millions and couldn't figure out why, that's when she turned the report over to Bob. That's why she gave Bob such a funny look when he gave her the completed report less than a hour after she had assigned it to him. Now, let me say this. I have written two articles previously on reasons for starting your own home or internet business. In these articles, I pointed out many of the most common reasons - more money, more time, be at home more - and some not quite so common - the ability to become involved in the community, the opportunity to go back to school, etc. However, up to now I have omitted the factor that decided Bob to try to find a way to start his own business...HAVING TO WORK WITH, AND PARTICULARLY FOR THE JENNIFERS OF THIS WORLD! By the way, if you haven't figured it out by now, there was no one named Bob, at least not in this story. Just Jennifer (not her real name) and me. |
