









To:   Chuck Divest, President

From: Mark Writeoff, Provost

Date: March 24, 1993

Re:   Staff Utilization


As part of our continuing effort to cut costs and to improve
the effectiveness of our operations I have engaged the
services of the inefficiency experts from the famous
consulting firm of TQM Inc. to examine our teaching
operations.  After constructing a model of our operations,
and a rather long study using their model (at $10000/day!)
they have come to some rather startling conclusions.

TQM has observed that our faculty tends to wander around
doing very little useful work -- most of the time they are
just greeting each other in random encounters in hallways.
The TQM model makes this abundantly clear.  Thus they
recommend that we restrict the motion of the faculty by
making them walk along prescribed paths.  Their model shows
that under such restrictions we can ensure that the faculty
will spend more time in places where they are likely to
do the work that needs to be done.  In particular, they
advocate restricting this peripatetic motion by building
special passageways connecting the faculty offices to the
particular lecture halls and laboratories to which they have
been assigned, and removing all other access to and from the
offices.

Although this sounds like a promising plan, it is sure to
raise some eyebrows.  So before I order physical plant to
start the implementation I want to have a better
understanding of the TQM model.  Unfortunately, the
programmers at TQM were all former MIT students -- they were
taught that infernal hyperparenthetical language called
Scheme.  I asked Professor Alyssa P. Hacker to help us
understand this hairy program, written in what they call
"object-oriented style."  She has kindly arranged for more
than 350 expert consultants to be available to answer our
questions on the evening of Wednesday, April 21, in the
Walker Memorial Gymnasium.

I enclose a (somewhat scary) letter and a simplified version
of the TQM model for your perusal.  Please contact me if you
can think of any questions I should ask in the upcoming
meeting.
