The Case of the Outside Job

COLD OPEN

CONNIE (V.O.)Twelve hundred dollars. One signature.

Eleven weeks.

Thirty-one hours of that was work.

I'd like a word with whoever had the rest.

— music sting —

ANNOUNCERWelcome to Adverse Events. Transcribed stories from the case files of Dr. Tracy Grant, who writes the protocol, and Connie Chase, who makes it all happen.

ANNOUNCERThe story you are about to hear is fiction. Any resemblance to your last study is purely coincidental and entirely predictable.

ANNOUNCERThe Case of the Outside Job.

SCENE ONE — CONNIE'S OFFICE, AFTER SIX

a desk lamp switch · a chair taking weight · one sheet of paper laid flat

CONNIE (V.O.)There is a form in this building called a Certification of Effort. Once a quarter you write down what percentage of you went where.

Nobody tracks it. Everybody signs it. It is the most honest lie in higher education and I have signed nine of them.

(beat)

This quarter it didn't add up.

a pencil · paper turned over

CONNIE (V.O.)Dr. Grant found a company that had already built the thing we needed. Twelve hundred a year. Under the threshold, which means no competing bids, which means easy.

I told her I'd take care of it. That was March.

She had it in her hands the second week of June.

(beat)

So I did what you do. I went back and itemized it.

ITEM ONE — THE CODES

CONNIE (V.O.)Item one. Two hours and ten minutes. Assembling a requisition.

ITEM — silence · room tone up fast — a wide office, typewriters at distance, a drawer rolling

CONNIEMarlene, it's Connie. I've got a fund, an org and a program. It's asking me for an activity code.

MARLENEIs it capital or is it a service?

CONNIEIt's a piece of software.

MARLENEThat's not one of the two.

CONNIEI know it isn't. That's why I'm calling you and not the form.

a drawer · pages turned, slowly, a long way in

MARLENEUse six one four.

CONNIESix one four is what we used in the fall.

MARLENESix one four was retired in March.

CONNIE(beat) Marlene, I just watched you look it up and tell me to use it.

MARLENEI told you what it is. I didn't say it was alive.

room tone out · silence · the desk again

CONNIE (V.O.)Two hours and ten minutes, and I want it on the record that not one minute of that was Marlene's fault. The notice that six one four had been retired went out in March.

It went to the man whose job it had been to retire it. He retired in February.

ITEM TWO — THE QUESTIONNAIRE

CONNIE (V.O.)Item two. Six hours, spread over nine days. Answering questions about a program that reads a spreadsheet.

ITEM — silence · room tone up fast — a small room, a radiator, a clock

CONNIEA hundred and eighty.

DALEA hundred and eighty-one. Forty-one has two parts.

CONNIEDale, question forty-one asks whether the software will be used on a network.

DALEIt does.

CONNIEEverything is used on a network.

DALEThat's why we ask everybody.

a page turned

CONNIEQuestion ninety-two wants the name of the person responsible for the data.

DALEThat'll be you.

CONNIEQuestion ninety-three wants that person's supervisor.

DALEThat'll be Dr. Grant.

CONNIEQuestion ninety-four wants to know who reviews the supervisor.

(beat)

DALEPut me.

CONNIEDale, you're the one asking.

DALEAnd I'm the one who has to review it. (beat) You start to see the shape of it after a few years.

room tone out · silence · the desk again

CONNIE (V.O.)Six hours. Every question a fair question. Every question asked of the wrong person, in the wrong order, about a thing none of us had yet been allowed to buy.

Dale's been doing that job eleven years. He's never once let anything bad through. Nobody has ever written that down anywhere.

ITEM THREE — THE JUSTIFICATION

CONNIE (V.O.)Item three. Five hours and a Saturday. Writing down why this company and no other company on earth.

ITEM — silence · room tone up fast — a counter, a rubber stamp, a radio playing low somewhere behind

WENDELLIt's under the threshold, so you don't need three bids.

CONNIEThat's what I understood.

WENDELLYou need the memo that says why you don't need three bids.

CONNIE(beat) Wendell. How do I prove a thing doesn't exist?

WENDELLYou describe what you need in enough detail that only one company can do it.

CONNIEAnd if two companies can do it?

WENDELLThen you write it in more detail. (beat) There's a form for that too.

a stamp · a drawer

CONNIEWho reads it?

WENDELLThree of us.

CONNIEWhat are you looking for?

WENDELLI've been doing this nineteen years and I couldn't tell you. I know it when it's wrong.

(beat)

Miss Chase, can I say something. You think this is your university. I came here from a state school with four times the students and it was the same memo. My brother-in-law does this for a hospital in Ohio. Same memo. Somewhere there is a first person who wrote it and everybody since has been copying him.

room tone out · silence · the desk again

CONNIE (V.O.)Five hours and a Saturday to describe a thing so exactly that nothing else in the world could be it.

Which, when you say it out loud, is just a very slow way of naming something.

ITEM FOUR — THE SAME FOUR QUESTIONS

CONNIE (V.O.)Item four. Three hours and forty minutes. Typing one address.

ITEM — silence · room tone up fast — a telephone, then another telephone, then another

VOICE ONEAnd the vendor's street address?

CONNIEFourteen hundred Fourth Street, suite two ten.

VOICE TWOStreet address for the vendor?

CONNIEFourteen hundred Fourth. Suite two ten.

VOICE THREEWe'll need their address.

CONNIE(beat) You have it. Purchasing has it. Legal has it. Somebody in your own office has it on a form I filled in on the eleventh.

VOICE THREEThat's their form. (beat) If you'd like them to send it over to us, there's a form for that.

room tone out · silence · the desk again

CONNIE (V.O.)Four reviews. Not one of them could see the other three.

And every one of them was right to ask, because not one of them could see the other three.

SCENE TWO — DR. GRANT'S OFFICE

a door · a chair · two cups set down

TRACYThe thermostat in this building is on a schedule somebody set in 1988 and there is no one left alive who knows the password.

CONNIEMm.

TRACYI have been told to submit a work order. The work order form asks me to state the desired temperature. Not the current temperature. The desired one. As though the difficulty were that nobody had thought to write it down.

CONNIEMm.

TRACYI put sixty-eight. I want it on the record that I put sixty-eight.

CONNIEOkay. What do you need.

TRACY(beat) Nothing. I need nothing. I came in here to say it to a person.

a cup

TRACYThe vendor. Where is it actually stuck?

CONNIEI'm working that out.

TRACYIt'll be the security review. It is always the security review. A hundred and eighty questions and a man with a radiator.

CONNIEIt isn't.

TRACYIt always is.

CONNIEDale answered every one of them inside nine days, and six of those hours were mine, not his.

(beat)

TRACYThen I have no idea. (beat) Which is worse, isn't it. If it were Dale I could go and stand in his doorway.

ITEM FIVE — THE ITEM WITH NOTHING IN IT

CONNIE (V.O.)Item five.

Four hundred and one hours.

ITEM — silence · room tone up fast — an office at night, a clock, a radiator, nothing else

room tone out · silence · the desk again

CONNIE (V.O.)Nothing.

That's the whole item. Nothing happened, nobody did anything wrong, and it took four hundred and one hours.

SCENE THREE — CONNIE'S OFFICE, LATER

a pencil · paper · the lamp

CONNIE (V.O.)Thirty-one hours of work. I can name every desk it sat on and every one of them did their part in under three days.

Marlene, two days. Dale, nine, and six of those hours were mine. Wendell, four. The four reviews, two days each and they ran at the same time.

Add up the work and you get a fortnight. Add up the calendar and you get eleven weeks.

(beat)

So I'd been counting the wrong thing. All this time I've been asking how long each office takes. Not one of them is slow. Every hour I couldn't account for, that thing was sitting on a desk nobody had told it was its turn.

the pencil down

CONNIE (V.O.)There's no form for that. Nobody certifies the waiting. The Certification of Effort has a column for what I did and no column at all for what was being done to me.

(beat)

So I made one.

a fresh sheet · a ruler laid down · a line drawn

CONNIE (V.O.)One line per desk. The date it went on, the date it came off. Not how hard anybody worked. Just where the thing was sleeping.

I have a drawer of these now. Nine studies' worth.

(beat)

I can't make any of it go faster. I never could. But I can walk into a room and say it has been with you nineteen days, and I have never once had to say it twice.

a door

TRACYIt's here. It came through. (beat) Connie, it came through on a Tuesday and nobody told either of us.

CONNIEI know. I've got it down as eleven weeks and two days.

TRACYYou wrote it down?

CONNIEI write all of it down now.

(beat)

TRACYTwelve hundred dollars.

CONNIETwelve hundred dollars.

TRACY(beat) We should throw a party.

CONNIEOkay, but there's a form for that.

— music up —

SIGN-OFF

ANNOUNCERThis has been The Case of the Outside Job.

Mr. —— appeared as the Voice of the Supplier Registration Line.

With thanks to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, the man with the action-packed expense account, whose radio show ran from 1949 to 1962.

Adverse Events is brought to you by Software for Research. For those who love discovery more than data entry.

And even though the grants office rules this an unallowable expense whenever they hear us say it: this is Adverse Events.

— music out —