Paul goes electronic

For every journey they undertook the drivers had to fill out a logbook of the trip detailing the various aspects - from number of miles driven to passengers carried to fuel consumption to any vehicle damage. These logbooks were as old as time and perfectly understood by everyone who worked in the company, and beyond. When going to a new National Hire Centre branch the drivers would know straight away how and where to enter the relevant information. The system worked well and no one had any complaints.

Paul however, had other ideas.

He saw an opportunity for cutting the staff who filed, stored and maintained these logbooks and using the savings to invest in some more vital management projects. He explained to the drivers that henceforth they would be entering all the information on a computer and dispense with all the paperwork. The drivers had their misgivings but were reassured that all would be well. They were shown the programme with which they could access all the data and enter their comments.

"But Paul," they said. "Using your programme we have to keep opening and closing sub-programmes to retrieve information from the different databases whereas currently there is a programme that skips effortlessly between them. Why are we regressing?"

Paul smiled. "There may be minor glitches but we will iron them out in time," he replied.

"What's the hurry?" they queried. "Why not wait until the existing system is at least as good as what we have rather than go backwards? Did you know for instance that in one of the sub-programmes the Return key doesn't work so everything we write comes out as a single line?"

Paul just smiled. "Oh yes, we know about that," he said.

"But you thought you'd go ahead and implement it anyway?" The drivers shook their heads. "What's being done about it?"

"Well..." Paul hesitated. "We're contacting the developers." The drivers' eyes rolled.

"Anyway, the main problem is that looking up all our information using these cumbersome routes rather than just flicking through the logbooks takes much more time. 12% more in fact: we've measured it."

Paul, who had no such data, grimaced. "Once you've got used to the system it will get quicker," he ventured.

"Quite possibly, Paul. But that doesn't explain why you're introducing an inferior system too soon, making us use it effectively as your unpaid beta testers whilst expecting us to work normally at the same time."

"Because it's progress," retorted Paul petulantly, and left.