I am a busy executive.
The bank has put me in charge of its administrative affairs. When I took the job, I imagined my day as a sequence of well-ordered steps, culminating in matter of fact decisions with clockwork precision.
It is 8:30 in the morning.
Monday.
The weekend is behind us. Lunch was nice in the little restaurant in the hills.
The phone rings. Joe, the downtown branch manager is interrupting my email sorting session.
“I have a problem with the air conditioning equipment, the day is going to be hot!”
I wonder why Joe has called me directly, the head of maintenance is the person to call.
“Where is Lilian?”
“She has called in sick”.
Alan, my assistant, is now searching for the telephone number of the A/C repair man. The department has decided not to go through the hassle of a maintenance agreement with the A/C supplier:
“The new models do not break down!” So they said.
Alan gets hold of Georges, who, with the heat wave approaching, is busy with his steady customers, those with a maintenance contract. The hours pass, the telephone keeps ringing, Joe is irate and I feel helpless.
At around 3:00PM Georges is at last in the downtown branch. Five minutes later, another phone call and the A/C is back online.
Joe pays the A/C man from the petty cash box and requests a report and a receipt. These will go in the drawer. Someone will enter the transaction in the Banking application petty cash ledger. The repair report will end-up in the branch filing cabinet.
What a mess: we will have to think about a better way to handle all this paper work.
It is almost 5:00 PM. So many things to do, and so little achieved. The stack of requests grows. It will have to wait until tomorrow.
Another day in my life!
