Paul gazed out over the car lot watching his drivers come and go on their various tasks. In the distance the jet sprays were throwing up a fine mist as a queue of vehicles waited in line to be cleaned. And over the whole scene fluttered the company flag sporting the well-known colours of the brand: red and yellow. Everything about the company was based on this red and yellow theme. The regulation shirts and overalls, the ties, the motif on the headed paper, even the vehicles themselves. Luxury and family cars were red whereas utility vehicles such as vans and lorries were yellow. The Board had decreed that this gave a highly visible, instantly identifiable on-the-street presence to the company and certainly the colour scheme was in the public's mind by now synonymous with the National Hire Service.
Something however irked Paul this morning. His sense of symmetry was upset for as he scanned the rows of vehicles red and yellow ones were mixed together like dots from an Impressionist's painting. No nice neat rows of one colour or the other but a random convocation leading to a riotous attack on the eye.
This would never do, he thought. How could one run a business with such a mess in what was in effect the storeroom? There was no way of keeping an easy tally of which vehicles were in or out on a job. He decided to meet with his managers and come up with a plan. They had several conferences and then met up with people from the IT department. Finally he sent a memo to the workers:
Single Colour Parking.
With immediate effect all vehicles are to be parked in their designated colour zones with no exceptions. The Red and Yellow areas will be clearly marked and drivers returning from a job should park their vehicles in the appropriate zone prior to cleaning and refuelling. Parking attendants have been employed to facilitate this process. In order to monitor this new policy employees are encouraged to notify any breaches immediately using the new 'SCP Breach' software that has been installed on all computers in the company. Monthly reports of the figures collated via this method will be widely distributed and disciplinary action, including fines, will result from failures to adhere to this policy.
The workers were by now becoming relatively inured against the more eccentric pronouncements of their masters but still thought that this was illogical. They went to see Paul.
"This new edict: how does it help us become more efficient?" they asked.
Paul had been half-expecting a degree of mutiny from his ungrateful charges and so had a little speech prepared.
"We are fortunate," he began, "that the colours in the logo of the company allows us this easy differentiation of vehicles so that without any extra expense we can streamline the process of vehicle storage. I am sure that efficiencies will result in this more user friendly system."
"But Paul," they argued, "we know our vehicles inside out. We are hardly going to mistake a Ferrari for a removals van just because they are parked next to each other, are we?"
"We need to present an image of uniformity to the outside world too, you know," Paul retorted. "It gives a good impression to anyone coming to visit."
"OK, we understand that point but it definitely doesn't make sense on an efficiency level. You won't always have the same number of red and yellow vehicles here. Are you constantly going to be changing the sizes of the two parking zones?"
Paul said nothing. He hadn't thought of that.
"And sometimes a driver has to to come back from a job and go straight out on an urgent second one. Do you really want him to waste time looking for a suitable parking spot in the appropriate colour zone just to satisfy this policy when this could waste precious minutes?"
Paul thought on his feet. "Of course there might need to be exceptions," he said lamely.
"Presumably this will all cost quite a lot to put in place - what with building new car parks and all that? There are many other areas of the business that could do with a bit more urgent investment rather than this."
"This has been designated a priority at the highest level," retorted Paul shortly.
"Yes, but spending time, money and effort on software to report breaches and then spend more time collating these reports and circulating them to everyone really is a bit much," they countered. "For a start it is punitive and secondly it won't achieve anything as the attendants that you have employed to direct vehicles to their appropriate zones won't let anyone pass unless it is to the 'correct' colour area anyway."
"I'm surprised that you can question the value of decisions taken at high management level in this way," Paul shot back using vehemence as his usual substitute for reasoned debate. "The service we will be providing will undoubtedly be better for this."
He turned and left thinking: And the view from my window will be ever so much neater.
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