Just as Lester expected, Tuesday had turned out a victory day for him, with the weekly review of current jobs only the start of his triumphs.
"If that's how long it takes you to clean one up, you ought to be working on three at once," Fred commented. "Come to think of it, Lester, you used to always work that way. What's going on? Slacking on us?"
"You stick to pulling your weight, Fred," Lester assured him, "and I'll make sure I keep delivering miracles."
"Modesty too!" Fred marveled, as several around the conference table gagged, coughed and guffawed. They moved on to other people's progress, and that seemed to be the end of the good news for the day. The workload was high, the Problem Desk was busy, plenty of people bogged down in numerous insuperable improvement and repair tasks, not to mention the majority list of calls from users who’d mis-keyed or misunderstood something. On balance it was a morning of disappointment for Fred.
"Stay a moment, will you, Lester," Fred asked as the others eventually filed out.
What could this be? He calculated he'd been clever with his own workload, and surely there couldn't be any cause for criticism of his performance. McAllister, perhaps?
"Your Christmas leave's been approved, and I'm over a barrel to make sure it happens. Given my freedom, I'd need to warn you that the final December transactions get completed in the middle of the week before Christmas. Then we start using the once-every-three-months programs. A week later, with the half-year reconciliations, we start using the software we only get to every six months. It usually means trouble. So, I'd say, stay where we can contact you, make sure you're available to help with any serious problems.
"However, the paper-pushers at Head office have gotten to me. The personnel people are thrilled with your plan to take the third week. I'm supposed to see you get out of here on time, and all possible steps are taken to give you an uninterrupted three weeks off. How do we do that? Can you foresee any of the things we should be fixing - or just checking - now?"
"Supposing I saw some, Fred, where would you get the spare resources to fix them? Just assuming I knew where the bear-traps were, you understand."
“You're the resource I had in mind."
That seemed logical. Fred knew that Lester had been on a winning streak these last few weeks.
"No; offhand, I don't know what might go off the rails. I'll think about it, though. Meanwhile, I'm not touching any evaluation work, just the high-priority problems. I've been helping Rod Mac to clear some of his tougher tasks, but you're aware of that. Is there anything I ought to be doing differently?"
"Not that I can see," Fred answered. "Are you any happier with the work you're doing, though?"
"Since we talked about a change of duties, you mean?"
"Yes."
"No, I'm bloody not! I've just got the sense to see you've got bigger problems than mine right at the moment." Lester didn't want to lower that pressure; for his own peace of mind, he still had to give the organisation a chance, whatever slim chance it was, to offer him a solution. "I wouldn't want you to think I've forgotten the subject, though," he finished, firmly cooling his flash of annoyance.
"The Christmas holiday will do us both good, then," Fred soothed. "Might generate some new ideas, and anyway time always opens new opportunities. You never know what's going to crop up," he ended hopefully.
So the holiday side of the wrap-up timetable was cast in concrete, Lester concluded, as he headed back to his desk. Trust an amateur like Fred to ask what would go wrong in advance, though. They had as much hope of foreseeing that as predicting who would win the next lottery.
What merited serious thought, as he cleaned up the edges of Rod's project evaluation problem, was his own final timetable.
The tools were all to hand, and here it was November 29th. He'd use a ragged-looking dollar number to make Plan C look like an accident, but nobody would find where it came from without a lot of work. The $2.5 million newly arrived in the Adelaide development account had been moved in (very roughly) $800,000 lots from the Asset Revaluation and two of the Reserve accounts. The total balances in the original accounts were all so big that those changes were fairly small, and shouldn’t be noticed till the new year. Not satisfied with that, he'd hunted around and wiped out all records of how he shifted them there. Then, to be absolutely sure of some getaway time, he used Rod's password, found his way into the security software, and wiped out all the records of his even having removed the transactions.
It was a good position he had now. Tucked away in his work file were the four little programs he could use to redirect someone's cheque when next they ran the Creditors' payment program. With a clear two hours' work, he could still set that up, but there was the risk that an impatient creditor might ruin things. As well, sitting in the tape library was the backup magnetic tape reel that would give him the Tax Commissioner's cut from the regular payroll. He would need to throw suspicion on the master tape, so they'd use the backup, but for ten million dollars, surely there’d be a way ...
Now, with the $2.5 million in the Adelaide account, he felt covered by belt, braces and stretch-sides. It really was time to look at timetables.
He had a mandate from Fred to go searching for trouble ahead, so he used it to make all the inquiries he needed.
The Christmas payroll ran on the Wednesday before the weekend the Accountants were planning to disburse all the deductions the day after, the 22nd. Usually, the helpful bookie explained, they'd sit on the cash for another two weeks, leave the cash account well-padded, but they wanted an early run at the half-year reconciliations this month. So, the Tax bank transfer was scheduled for the 22nd. He'd need to do something creative a day or two before, if he was to clean up with Plan B.
The last Payable/Creditors' cheque run was on Friday morning, the 23rd. They had to get it over before the Christmas party ruined everyone's concentration, and as late as possible before month-end. However, with the state of the mails around Christmas, they didn't much care if most of those cheques were delivered in the new year, instead of around the 28th or 29th. The books were closed to incoming claims on the 20th, and he calculated he could intercept a batch of payment authorities a day or so later than that.
Suppose he got the Tax man's money with Plan B: then he needed some time off on the Friday - if they cleared the transfer that fast - to start laundering it.
Then he and Annette could leave the next day on their holiday for New Zealand.
If, on the other hand, the chance arose to work the Accounts Payables schemes, either A or C, the proceeds would land in the Oakleigh mailbox about a week after the holiday was due to start. He'd probably have to fly back, just to get things rolling.
There was enough time left today to report on Rod's project evaluation fault, and he decided he'd better do a few days' solid work after that. Mustn't lose the reputation for divinity just yet!
Fred Hart was nowhere near as well placed, however; in fact, he was in a deep hole. He, too, had been invited to stay a while after Ken Murray's weekly control meeting, but he had a fair idea of the reasons.
He hadn't guessed how far the problem had gone, however.
"Fred, I want us to look closely at the performance of your group over the last few months," Ken began. "You were quite loaded, but you were on top, three months back. Then we got two more people, and the position has deteriorated steadily since. Can you make sense of it for me?"
After careful thought, Fred offered "Overloads just come and go, Ken. Without the new men, I just think we'd be a lot worse off."
"I've been looking at your workload closely, though, and it doesn't seem to be that simple," Murray persisted. "You say you've got good people, and you're happy with the new people. There doesn't seem to be a higher level of incoming work. You've been deferring my evaluation requests onto what looks like a "sometime never” timetable. I’ve not seen any planning initiatives in your group for at least a month."
"The newcomers would have absorbed a lot of our normal resources," Fred broke in, "while they were in training."
"Do you think that's what it was, Fred, just the training load of the last few months?"
"Yes, mostly, and we've had a spate of more difficult problems, too."
But I thought you'd organised the supervision and training so it was only a ten per cent load on two of your other people, Fred."
Stumped there, Fred thought a moment. "Well, that was the plan, but we certainly do seem to have slowed up. Perhaps it's just a collection of different problems."
"Tell me about some of them," Ken asked quietly.
"I don't really get involved in the detail. You just have to trust the people in my area."
"You don't really know what they do, then?"
"I've not done it myself, if that's what you mean."
"Tell me what you understand of your supervisor's role here, Fred."
Thoroughly defensive now, Fred stumbled over some platitudes about both-way communication of progress and goals, motivation and the like. Murray sat quietly, giving him plenty of time to nail the coffin tightly shut.
After Fred paused, and a minute's deathly still, Ken picked up the dialogue.
"From what I can see, then, with your background, it must be very difficult to understand your group's difficulties and their achievements. It must be even harder to plan and control the resources you've got, given you don't have a good feel for how those resources are performing. Beyond that, it's bordering on the impossible for you to understand and resolve your peoples' problems. It must be quite difficult for you to foresee the kind of supervisory problems you've got now.
"It's a problem, don't you see? Your group is overloaded, you're not sure why, and you don't know what's needed to fix it. To an outside observer, the result of two extra people should be just the opposite. You do see the problem, don't you?"
Fred nodded weakly.
"You need help, Fred. You and I are going into a new way of operating together. It's called guidance. The way it works is that we need to spend a lot more time together, both of us, studying together how the group is operating. We'll define and tackle the problems together, and we'll come up with jointly-agreed initiatives to deal with those problems. That way we can share each other's understanding of situations. Over a period of a month or two, as we work at various aspects, we can then develop a feel for how well you can build up your control of the position, or whether you might be better suited to some other position that's a closer fit with your background. It that clear?"
Another weak nod.
"Well, then, let's get down to some of the details. First time around, there are three points I want to raise. The first is the desirability of specialising your people's efforts. What I'm suggesting is that you need to get the tasks through more quickly. So you make an effort to see that each problem goes into the hands of the person best fitted to resolve it?"
"Not a good idea now," Fred answered. "That kind of work programming leads to a group of people with islands of knowledge, but each one becomes irreplaceable. You'd only do that kind of thing in a bad overload or really tight timetable situation." Spotting the opening he'd left, Fred went silent.
"When was the last time you did that kind of thing, Fred?"
"I've never actually done it. I think the boys might have themselves, once or twice in the last five years." Surreptitiously restraining a hasty comment, Murray suggested: "It's time you took a lead, Fred. You ought to get right onto that, today. I want to see this apparent overload cleared as quickly as possible, or at the very least understood, and Christmas vacation is very close. Some focus might help. Do you have a better idea?"
"No, not really."
"Can you do that?" Murray asked.
"It won't be easy, but, yes."
“Good man. Now, the second point I wanted to talk about is whether your people should have free access to the Operations areas."
"But they do already," Fred commented.
"That's the problem, you see."