Denice was sweating.
She had driven up to Sacramento and was presenting to
Bona-Brown and his ever-present sidekick, Spirochete. It was not going well.
She had gone in with a ten page Powerpoint. She spent less than a minute on each
slide. The news, as far as she could
see, was happy, happy, happy.
Tax receipts were up 75% and climbing over the previous
year. Adjusted for inflation that was an
increase of almost 30%.
Productivity was climbing.
Shops were producing more goods and services per man-hour than they had
been the previous year.
The number of “walkers” picked up by the roving hearses had
fallen off of a cliff.
The busses were even starting to run on time.
Denice’s concluding page was that all of those trends
started in about mid-September when vast amounts of “excess to contract”
agricultural products started pouring into SD-LA.
The injection of food-stuffs caused the price of black
market food to collapse and the money that had been swallowed up by the
under-the-table economy was now showing up in the taxable economy.
Denice graciously noted that most of these trends started
while Barbilla was running SD-LA.
Her presentation was met with a cold, stony silence.
“What you have forgotten” Spirochete intoned “is that any
resource that is consumed outside of the plan is a waste. We cannot afford waste.”
Denice countered, “I don’t see how reducing deaths due to
starvation is a waste.”
Spirochete interjected, “The Department of Health published
figures that Cali now has a greater percentage of people with healthy Body Mass
Indexes then ever before. They also
state that the percentages improve every month.”
“Well, that would be another thing.” Denice stated. “I contacted Professors at UCLA, UCSD, UC-Irvine
and they all said medical statistics still supported a BMI range of 18.5-to-25
is the healthy range. They also noted
that the lower bound for Cali’s official targets went from 18.5-to-16.5 and now
there is no lower range. Officially, a
skeleton is considered to have a ‘healthy’ BMI.”
Spirochete’s face was red.
“Ms Delarosa, we are not here to quibble over the judgment of the Cali
medical establishment. You clearly found
some “experts” who are outliers and naively believed them. That issue is not open for debate.”
Spirochete continued, “You have a job to do and you are
failing. You failed when the
agricultural sector produced, in your own words, ‘vast amounts of “excess to contract” agricultural products’. You failed by not stopping the transport of
those contraband goods into SD-LA. You
failed by coming up here and bragging about your failures, expecting a pat on
the head like some brown-nosing teacher’s pet.”
“You are not following processes. You are running around like a fucking
cowboy. You fired four loyal civil servants
that we had to find positions for here in Sacramento.” Spirochete said.
“This next thing is kind of micro, but it is about the
numbers you quoted in your presentation.
Those numbers are not official data.
It takes a minimum of six months to ‘purify’ the numbers, to tabulate
the numbers, verify their quality and to reconcile them with the plan. Six months at a minimum…tax data takes a
minimum of a year because you have no idea how much of that tax-stream is going
to be redirected back to the source as tax breaks and incentives.”
“That is why you have to stop trying to manage in real-time
and become process oriented. Your
outcomes are fantasies and scientific managers don’t manage to fantasies.” Spirochete
concluded.
Denice was livid; livid but under control. She had not been dressed down like this since
boot camp.
“We know,” Bona-Brown started “that the Cartel is in breach
of their concession terms because they distributed most of the contraband. To that end, we are going to terminate that
relationship and grant the concession contract to one of their competitors.”
Spirochete started to object to the term “Cartel” but
Bona-Brown dismissed him with a wave.
“Outside this room we use their ‘corporate’ name, but inside this room
we can call them what they are, the Cartel.”
“Your job” Bona-Brown continued “is to go back to SD-LA, to
follow processes and to inform the Cartel that they are losing their
concession. It is time to put on your
big-girl panties and earn your pay. Is
that clear?”
Denice had one of those “Alice in Wonderland”
outside-of-body observations: They are mad.
Totally and certifiably loony-tunes.
She nodded her head.
“Yes, I understand.” she said, willing the meeting be over so she could
make her escape.
Spirochete concluded “Inform the Cartel about their persona non-grata status within the week
because we will be rolling out a request-for-quote at the start of next month
and we don’t want it to be a total surprise to them.”
After Denice left Spirochete said to Bona-Brown, “I bet you
a thousand Callors that she is dead in less than four weeks.”
Bona-Brown said, “I will take that bet. It seems like the ugly ones are the hardest
ones to kill.”
Next Installment
Next Installment
No comments:
Post a Comment
Readers who are willing to comment make this a better blog. Civil dialog is a valuable thing.