Tale of the Swim-Lane Office

“Nice office space Ted! This room is huge!”

Ted was unpacking his single box of desk accessories. His desk was at the end of the very long narrow room. Mark was standing at the far end by the front door in the hallway.

The echo of Marks voice in the large empty room was noticeable.

The room was empty except for the desk.

“I know”, replied Ted. He plunked his stapler on the desk.

Mark took another sip of coffee as he walked through the room. There were various doors up and down both walls.

“Promotion?” he asked Ted.

“Nope” said Ted; his head down, digging deeper in his box. “I’m still a business analyst”.

“Huh”, said Mark. “What’s up?”

“Well … you know this big Sales project I’ve been working on?”

“Yeah, automating the reporting?”

“That’s the one. I had been after a system to handle this for some time”.

“I know. How did you finally sell it?”

“I didn’t” said Ted.

“But I thought …”

“I drew up an activity diagram – a flowchart - of all the steps I take to perform a task.”

“I saw it – it was huge – every person involved had their own swim-lane. I thought for sure that would sell your point for you.”

“It kind of did. It would seem that Phil doesn’t really understand business process diagrams.”

“Uh huh”. This was not news to Mark. “What’s your point?”

“When I showed him the diagram, and all the functions I perform to generate these reports – and how I have to take a little information from so many people …”

“… yeah? …”

“… and most of the diagram was all crammed into my tiny little swimlane ..”

“ .. you’re kidding ... “

“I wish I were. Phil thought I was complaining about office space!”.

“And so he gave you this big swim lane for an office”

“Yup. Phil said I needed more room to work. He didn’t want to hear another word about, and apologized for making me work in such cramped conditions all this time. He said I was a saint for not complaining until now.”

At that moment loud swearing could be heard from the tiny office through the middle door. Allan, the Vice President of Sales, was trying to cram his office furnishings into a space that equated to a small cubicle work space.

“Let me guess – the diagram didn’t show much activity for Al?”

“Well he only reviews the reports when they’re finished”, answered Ted.

“You mean Phil actually thought you were showing him an office floor plan to improve the sales reporting?” continued Mark.

“Yep.” Ted was shaking his head, still looking downwards – visibly uncomfortable with his fortune from the business owners misunderstanding.

“Phil says those reports make this company tick. He says we can’t function without those numbers.”

“He’s probably right” said Mark. “He refers to them as our Bible.”

A couple minutes passed as they stood together staring out across the city through the huge glass window.

“Well, congrats old man!” said Mark as he gave Ted a punch in the arm and a pat on the back. “It looks like you’re living large”.

“Uh … err.. Thanks” mumbled Ted.

“Well I better get to my desk before people start thinking I’m late,” said Mark, still wearing his coat and carrying his briefcase.

“About that …”, started Ted.

Mark turned to look at him. His face suddenly alarmed. “But I don’t have anything to do with Sales reporting!”.

“I know” said Ted. “I’m so sorry”.

“Where do I sit?” asked Mark.

“You’re not in my diagram”, replied Ted.

“Aw for crying out loud!” yelled Mark, as he spun to storm out the large room. It took several seconds for Mark to reach the door before he could slam it shut behind him.

Ted reached into his box and pulled out his tape dispenser and sat it on the desk next to the stapler.

Our New House Honeymoon

We have been in our new house for four weeks now. We still love it. We still have to rub our eyes to believe we really live here. We are still in that “honeymoon” phase.

But I can feel the honeymoon starting to come to an end.

We have had a few experiences over the last four weeks. New home owner experiences.

We have had an overflowed toilet than ran down through the ducts into the basement downstairs. That was a mess, but we understand better now and are again quite content with the washroom.

We discovered and destroyed a hornet’s nest in a scrub bush in our back yard. It was right next to the girl’s clubhouse slide. It was huge and actually a masterpiece. The civilization that resided in this nest had been terrorizing the whole neighborhood and was as sophisticated as the Incas in their day.

We have a drain in our backyard – as do all other yards in our neighborhood – by city bylaw – that seems to be a nesting place for mosquitos. I have not figured out a remedy for this calamity yet, and would appreciate any suggestions you might have.

So after dark, I cannot sit in the back yard and listen to my Tiger ball games. And this is not an acceptable condition.

We also seem to experience a high rate of electrical power outages. And when the power goes down, the surge seems to spike more than I have known before. A set of three of these surges has blown out our LCD monitor, and caused the computer itself some questionable “issues”.

But then we had the pool mishap.

We have a 21 foot above ground pool. The back deck has several teirs and hangs over the pool like a dock on a lake. It’s quite nice.

The other night we were out cleaning up some yard mess; weeding, watering, and the like. In passing Darlene asked me to put the hose in the pool, “it looks a hair low” she said.

So I got the hose out, put the end in, and turned on the faucet. Then I went back about my business.

That was at 9:30 at night.

At about 11:30, it was raining heavy outside. And I could hear the heavy rain in our bedroom.

“Man, it’s pouring out there”, I said.
Darlene woke up from a deep sleep.

“Did you turn off the hose?”

“Oh crap!” I said. Okay, I did not exactly say "crap". But now I knew why it sounded like it was pouring rain outside.

Oh crap.

Out the back I ran. It was lightly sprinkling. But the backside of the skimmer was pouring out water like Niagara Falls.

Thunder boomed in the distance and heat lighting was going off like bulbs at a paparazzi festival.
And the hose was still running.

I ran over to the faucet and turned it off.

Then Darlene came out.

“Back-wash! Back-Wash! Back-wash!” she was yelling.

I unraveleled the flimsy blue back-wash hose and ran it into the drain in our yard. I fished it down far enough to be under the water level. Meanwhile Darlene was flipping the filter lever around to the back-wash setting. She flipped the motor on.

“Gerbeda-flubeda-thppppp”, said the hose as the air bed out of the hose and through the drain water.

"Blubeda-blubeda-blubeda…” said the hose as the backwash started its steady flow.

Luckily the hose was loud enough to mask our explatives as we scrambled in the now pouring rain, in the dark, stepping on rocks and pricker weeds.

"Blubeda-blubeda-blubeda…..”

About 15 minutes later, the pressure in the flimsy blue hose proved too much, and the hose gave way with a pop like a balloon. It burst about halfway to the drain. The yard started to flood.

We turned off the motor. We looked over our mess. We were soaked. We were unhappy. And we were certain we had destroyed our wonderful pool.

“It only took us three weeks to wreck it”, said Darlene - almost sobbing.

We stood in the pouring rain, and had a smoke.

And then we went back to bed.

The next morning we examined the damage. It was still raining. But the water in the pool was very cloudy. The good news is that the pool, the motor, the yard – all seemed to have survived our forgetfulness. There was no damage.

All was fine.

All but the flimsy blue back-wash hose.