Where do these strange memos come from

Where do these strange memos come from?

There are a lot of odd memos, policies and other business politics floating around out there. In Neal Stephenson's book, Snow Crash, we see some of this going on. Y.T.'s mom has to deal with some very strange goings on indeed. Not only was one of the memos she got in her e-mail odd, but the way she reacted to the content is strange as well. The company's control she was under caused her to react this way. I think businesses in the real world try to do everything they can to make money or save money. They even pay people to figure these things out. We laugh about the e-mail Y.T.'s mom got at work, but we all have had to deal with something like this in our life where someone above us tells us to do something and we think we have better ideas of getting it done. The first time we had to deal with someone like this was probably our parents

or our teachers. In the workplace, when a manager or boss tells us they are changing the way they are doing things around here, it usually is never good. I think I have many good examples of this from when I worked at K-Mart. The difference between a job like the one I had and that of say an office job for a big company would be I knew I had no way of moving up in that job and who in their right mind would want to? So if I found a better or easier way of doing something that is the way I did it. They probably wanted to fire me many times but they knew they couldn't because who would they hire to replace me, there was no one.

When we get a memo at work it usually is about something pointless or seems unreal. Some extreme examples of memos on policies about how we spend our time at work and sick days. I agree people should use their time wisely, but sometimes these policies go to far. As long as a job gets done, who cares how it got done.

The memo Y.T.'s mom got from her supervisors at Fedland on the new TP pool regulations was a bit on the extreme side. They spent all this time discussing the details of every possible idea about toilet paper distribution. If it was me I would be happy just to get some toilet paper I would not want to have to think about the exact measurement of my toilet paper.

Then towards the end of the memo there is an estimated amount of time that the memo should be read in. They are so worried about how their employees are spending their (Fedland's) time, that they don't even think about if their own time is spent wisely (TP poll?). Should we just read memos or should we analyze how to read them? It is quite amusing how some companies spend so much time and energy educating their employees on time management and other issues that have nothing to do with their work like TP polls, that when it comes down to the work the employees were hired for, they would get a lot more done if they were just left to do it. Also they would be able to do their work more productively if they did not have to worry about how much toilet paper they are going to be able to use.

The government agencies and L. Bob Rife in Snow Crash seem to monitor every move of their employees. There has always been controversies on how much a workplace can monitor their employees. Once again some companies are going to far on the policies on employee monitoring.