The economy must be economical.

I read Edison’s story about assistants managers in cleaning, and I remembered a classmate’s story about his first job.

At the beginning of the last decade, immediately after the institution, a comrade (for simplicity we will call him Sasha) worked in a large semi-state company (from the "National Heritage" series). He joined the department, which prepared operational reports, to the position of a simple economist. The large company had four main areas of activity, each of which was in two or three subdivisions. And the meaning of the department's activities was to prepare daily reports on the results of work, the movement of money, etc. Thro the day, three types of reports were prepared for each subtype, and the head of the department with a pack of paper three times a day ran "up." The department was considered very progressive, the results of its work were extremely useful, well, and so on.

The number of department was at the time of 13 people (that is, roughly speaking, per person on each reporting direction, and the boss on top). Sasha was taken just on one of the directions in exchange for another of our fellow students who planned to move to another department (in fact, on his own recommendation Sasha and got into this "ownership"). He had a month to study the process of preparing reports, after which to do them on his own. He “studyed.”

90% of the time of all employees of the department went to physical education. More precisely, on the runway between the floors of different units and the collection of statistics. The data was collected literally by hand: you came to the department you needed, asked the right person for fresh numbers, recorded them in your notebook, and ran on. Then, when this marathon was over, he returned to his workplace and transferred the data from the notebook to Excel. Then the numbers were hit, the report was printed and left with the head of the department up. And the responsible employee rested for half an hour, and ran on a new, already other departments.

I do not forgive attention to these walks of torment. I mentioned above that it was the beginning of the 2000s. There were also computer networks, and the Internet, and email. There was also an automated accounting system. There were not only brains. Sasha took a few runs to think, “Wouldn’t it all go on...?Take a box of beer and go visit the local computer workers.

Those took doping, scratched their heads, and literally in a couple of days they scratched into MS Access a fairly simple reporting system. Part of the data was collected automatically (several scripts simply took data from other systems used in the enterprise), the rest could be entered through a simple form on their computer. As a result, a week later, instead of running around the 10-storey building, like a horse bitten in a pop, Sasha in 10 minutes called several people with a request to enter the necessary data, another 20 minutes later printed a report and went to read anecdotes on this site.

The same happened at lunch and at night. Most importantly, the next day too. On the third day, Sasha was caught by a boss reading anecdotes, after which a dialogue took place between them about the following content:

What are you doing?
I read anecdotes.
And the report?
He was on the table an hour ago.
So why did your predecessor spend three hours preparing it?
Listen, I can also spend three hours preparing him. If you want, I can read anecdotes in the dining room. But the result will be the same.

The chief, a former military officer, could not calmly perceive a loosely wandering subordinate (as the army wisdom says, "A good soldier is a loosely sold soldier"), therefore instructed Sache from the next day to prepare reports in two directions instead of one (the well-responsible for the second report employee went on vacation). Well, two reports - so two, for another box of beer, the same computer workers completed the report. The only thing that changed - it was necessary to call twice as many employees on the phone (that is, it did not take 10 minutes a day to call, but 20). As you can see, Sasha’s new habit of reading anecdotes almost did not affect it. Like the proposal that followed a week later to take on another direction (especially since the beer was brotherly shared between computer workers and Sasha during the joint feast, and many of those responsible for the data input, a week later, provided information and without reminders).

In general, after some time it turned out that instead of 12 people and the boss for the normal work of the department was enough only two. Written for a total of three beer boxes, the system worked successfully for more than 5 years, survived two attempts to "complex automation" of the enterprise (when boys in business costumes tried to implement systems for several million dollars), and eventually died only because the new version of MS Office refused to work with the old database.

What about Sasha? He was fired with the words "I have been growing the department here for three years, a little more - and there would be a whole management. You destroyed everything for me.”