‘Outstanding. What’s the flow look like then?’
‘First individual Exams is one room, couple dozen desks plus Yeagle’s little frosted cubicle thing. Either the room’s symmetries are off or there are rough divisions — might be one section of 1040, one of 1040A, a smaller one for Fats the way Keene was. There’s a Corporate branch that’s a whole separate room.’
‘If Corporate changes over it won’t be till after, they’ve run the experiment with the DIF so—’
‘Hence my not mentioning it.’
‘If you’re cozy with Glendenning’s dry-skin lady then you must have a line on the specs.’
‘The specs are a mess. They’re not even on cards. They use old 904 forms I haven’t seen since the Training Center.’
‘Huge surprise.’
‘They’re all in horrible old dark-green cabinets in a basement complex even spiders would be hesitant to go into.’
‘But you boldly went down there with a flashlight, you want Mel to know.’
‘Today or tomorrow I have to get somebody in Martinsburg to input them and tabulate the mean values; the spec forms are a mess because the work’s so periodic. Underline for Mel that they get returns from both Region and the St. Louis SC with no set procedures or even rhythms that I can see.’
‘The trucks just back up and unload the returns you’re saying.’
‘So what I’ve got pending tabs — this is going to look very strange — is for the last six months a total 1,829 returns go through 047’s Exams branch per month, but that figure includes everything from individual EZs to nightmare Fats with twenty schedules each to EST-reconciliations that Rosebury lets Danmeyer hit them with in nightmarish waves quarterly.’
‘This is not broken down in a way that tells me anything, Claudie.’
‘It’s when you get here you’re going to see why. It’s Dickensian. There’s one UNIVAC terminal in the room. The kicks from Martinsburg come round on big carts pushed by cart boys like they had, then the results get slid down slides two levels down where the keypunch girls prepare the kicks back for Region and Collections. And/or Collections. And the examiners are operating with pencils and NCR adding machines some of which still have I Like Ike and the ilk stickers on them. They’ve got those angled trays or drawer things coming in at their desks from all angles like those pictures of Philly Mel had in the nightmare days. Here they get standard kicks from Martinsburg, plus ESTs, plus exam requests from CID. They do Fats that St. Louis doesn’t even bother to open they’re so fat. They do contract work for Corporate Audits when a CA goes multiyear. The whole thing’s almost Philly-grade, tell him. But this—’
‘1,829 by 26 by 22 workdays is what, three a day?’
‘3.198 a day by nine-hour shifts minus lunch minus Region average 45.6 minutes for breaks which I’ve got as seven hours 29.4 minutes so 3.2 over 7.5 is.4266 repeating 6 returns per man-hour, which for the Region is so totally average that—’
‘So it’s neither here nor there, as a productivity stat, which hurts our case with Glendenning maybe but also makes 047 Exams a fine test case.’
‘No, Reynolds. I mean totally average. The average for Region 4 for ’82, ’83, and the part of ’84 Internal’s got loads for — get this — is.42 repeating 6 returns per man-hour.’
‘They’re exactly average?’
‘And anticipating just that reaction please tell Mel I checked this twice. All off cards, flowthrough totals, performance reviews, utilizations specs. 42 repeating 6. As if—’
‘As if Glendenning and Rosebury and/or this Yeagle character were somehow cooking the Output books to produce an output so totally average that no one would ever suspect them of cooking the Output books.’
‘I’ll check it again if you like if you’ll let me take just one moment here to discuss the apartment’s water pressure and a commode with the single laziest flush I’ve seen in twelve US—’
The tone now was of Reynolds Jensen Jr. 100 percent focused, intent, which meant that whether sitting or standing he was bent slightly forward at the waist and not blinking at all. ‘Do. Check. He’ll want you to, you — or as if somehow Glendenning’s been able to structure manpower and flow and morale in just such a way that he gets precisely the average out of Exams.’
‘Meaning if and when he wants it to go up he just waves his wand and presto.’
‘Could he be that good?’
‘It would make him and/or the team of him and Rosebury a genius, a Mozart of production, whose management methods, if quantified and taught or if the other District Directors convinced DC it could be taught—’
‘Could kill the project.’
‘Especially if you could see these examiners. This is not an elite force, Reynolds. Not one over a GS-11 paygrade. Tics, spasms, eccentricities. Trembling hands. They’re all in the men’s room brushing their teeth after lunch. Whole lot of brushing going on. One has a violin on his desk. No reason. Just a violin. Another has a Doberman hand puppet on his hand without the rubber, which he talks to.’
‘These should all be notated, Claudie.’
‘These are shells of men I’m saying. If Glendenning can get any throughput he wants out of this crew… Some look catatonic. One might be an idiot savant. I haven’t seen him yet.’
‘None of which has to do with throughput.’
‘And have I mentioned the wind out here? The sound it makes through cracks near the windows? Or the heat? Or the enormous mass of these tiny cruciform rural towns with exactly one intersection that appear to consist entirely of a grain silo and a gas station with names like Arrowsmith, Anthony, Shirley, Tolono, Stayne? There’s a town called Big Thistle near here. Repeat: Big Thistle, Illinois. Hey, let’s us go over to the Big Thistle Diner and snap Fanny’s girdle. And the humidity. Towels don’t dry; your windshield gets condensation like a glass of iced tea if you run the AC on the way in. The sky the color of motel ice — no color, no depth. It’s like a bad dream. And the flatness. What’s the horizon at sea level, eighteen miles?’
‘Let’s stay on task, Claudie.’
‘He’s posted me to the second dimension, R.J.’
‘You were doing so well, Claudie.’
‘And what if I said I miss you?’
‘We’re not going to get into this, not—’
‘Because you know the way someone really old’s eyes look, with cataracts? That milky spooky anybody-home quality? Imagine a whole face like that. Philly was frenzy. This is a kind of caul of boredom. Boredom past boredom. These examiners, most—’
‘You realize this is good news in a way.’
‘Well it’s not good to look at, I can certainly—’
‘Has any of the demo equipment arrived?’
‘Glendenning’s letting them personalize their desks. Listen to music if they — not smoke at their desks, but get this: A couple of them chew tobacco at their desks.’
‘Where are we in terms of profiles of the actual hardware then?’
‘Have you by chance ever actually seen an in-use spittoon, Reynolds, because I cer—’
‘I miss you, too, Claude. Happy now?’
Once he’d chewed it so badly it got infected, which made it taste just awful. ‘I haven’t done a list per se as such yet.’
‘What should I tell Mel?’
‘That I’ve been here only a week and am under terrific duress from the primitiveness of the field-quarters, lack of contact vectors, and numbing heat. Tell Mel that.’
‘Aren’t we brave in absentia.’
‘As you may recall the real hardware’s over with Corporate in the out-site, and except for verifying Mel’s facilities I’ve been lurking in Exams. Per specs I believe.’