NOTE: I mean mentally blind. My friends who cannot see, and some accountants I've worked with, are smart.
A corporate bureaucracy kept complaining that a department had 2.5 computers per employee - thinking that was wasteful. So management spent much time looking for computers in the offices and labs.
They found:
- some software engineers needed both a PC and a Unix workstation, so had two computers.
- in the lab, old PCs had been set up to run automated tests. Slow but hands-off and logged data, so they could just be left to run day and night.
- one old PC had been set up as a bulletin board, so people working on installations in the field could upload data for their colleagues to analyze and download results and new software, and messages (whenever, wherever - as they might be working all night or several times zones away).
Anything wrong with the above? No! they were working smart, making good use of old equipment that wasn't worth much anymore.
Unfortunately the managers never did find more than about 1.5 computers per employee. Being a bureaucracy dialogue was not possible, so they remained eternally suspicious that the accountants were not competent to keep accurate records. (I wondered if scrapped computers were not correctly recorded as disposed of - and perhaps a few were stolen from dusty corners, not likely in the separate building of 75 people I worked in at the time. I am confident that the engineers used any parts they could out of any unrepairable or really obsolete computers, to imrove or repair others.)
Intellectual property of Keith Sketchley, version 2011.11.13