# The Case of the Outside Job
Show: Adverse Events · Lead: Connie Chase · Draft 1
Eyebrow: Script · Draft 1
**Lead: Connie Chase.** The first case that is not about a study. Nothing goes wrong with anybody's
data, nobody is harmed, and the ending is a win. Comic version at comic-outside-job.html; beats at case-notes-outside-job.md.
The spine is Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: the episode is narrated as an itemized account, and every
item opens a flashback. Credited by name in the outro.
> **This is the script.** The build is `radio-outside-job.html`, generated from this file
> by `rake comedy:build`. Write here; the build is disposable and gets overwritten.
>
> Format: `##` opens a scene · `>` is a sound cue · `**CAPS**` is a speaker ·
> `!` is a production note · everything else is speech · blank line between
> paragraphs · `*(beat)*` inline. Anything up here that isn't one of those is the
> header blurb.
>
> **Flashback cue.** Every item drops into a flashback the same way, so the listener
> learns it by the second one: `> ITEM — silence · room tone up fast — ` opens,
> and `> room tone out · silence · the desk again` returns. Silence first, then the
> room arriving underneath the dialogue rather than before it. Exact durations get
> settled at the session; the script only has to be consistent.
---
## 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 —
**ANNOUNCER**
Welcome 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.
**ANNOUNCER**
The story you are about to hear is fiction. Any resemblance to your last study is purely
coincidental and entirely predictable.
**ANNOUNCER**
*The 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
**CONNIE**
Marlene, it's Connie. I've got a fund, an org and a program. It's asking me for an activity code.
**MARLENE**
Is it capital or is it a service?
**CONNIE**
It's a piece of software.
**MARLENE**
That's not one of the two.
**CONNIE**
I know it isn't. That's why I'm calling you and not the form.
> a drawer · pages turned, slowly, a long way in
**MARLENE**
Use six one four.
**CONNIE**
Six one four is what we used in the fall.
**MARLENE**
Six one four was retired in March.
**CONNIE**
*(beat)* Marlene, I just watched you look it up and tell me to use it.
**MARLENE**
I 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
**CONNIE**
A hundred and eighty.
**DALE**
A hundred and eighty-one. Forty-one has two parts.
**CONNIE**
Dale, question forty-one asks whether the software will be used on a network.
**DALE**
It does.
**CONNIE**
Everything is used on a network.
**DALE**
That's why we ask everybody.
> a page turned
**CONNIE**
Question ninety-two wants the name of the person responsible for the data.
**DALE**
That'll be you.
**CONNIE**
Question ninety-three wants that person's supervisor.
**DALE**
That'll be Dr. Grant.
**CONNIE**
Question ninety-four wants to know who reviews the supervisor.
> *(beat)*
**DALE**
Put me.
**CONNIE**
Dale, you're the one asking.
**DALE**
And 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
**WENDELL**
It's under the threshold, so you don't need three bids.
**CONNIE**
That's what I understood.
**WENDELL**
You need the memo that says why you don't need three bids.
**CONNIE**
*(beat)* Wendell. How do I prove a thing doesn't exist?
**WENDELL**
You describe what you need in enough detail that only one company can do it.
**CONNIE**
And if two companies can do it?
**WENDELL**
Then you write it in more detail. *(beat)* There's a form for that too.
> a stamp · a drawer
**CONNIE**
Who reads it?
**WENDELL**
Three of us.
**CONNIE**
What are you looking for?
**WENDELL**
I'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 ONE**
And the vendor's street address?
**CONNIE**
Fourteen hundred Fourth Street, suite two ten.
**VOICE TWO**
Street address for the vendor?
**CONNIE**
Fourteen hundred Fourth. Suite two ten.
**VOICE THREE**
We'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 THREE**
That'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
**TRACY**
The thermostat in this building is on a schedule somebody set in 1988 and there is no one left
alive who knows the password.
**CONNIE**
Mm.
**TRACY**
I 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.
**CONNIE**
Mm.
**TRACY**
I put sixty-eight. I want it on the record that I put sixty-eight.
**CONNIE**
Okay. What do you need.
**TRACY**
*(beat)* Nothing. I need nothing. I came in here to say it to a person.
> a cup
**TRACY**
The vendor. Where is it actually stuck?
**CONNIE**
I'm working that out.
**TRACY**
It'll be the security review. It is always the security review. A hundred and eighty questions
and a man with a radiator.
**CONNIE**
It isn't.
**TRACY**
It always is.
**CONNIE**
Dale answered every one of them inside nine days, and six of those hours were mine, not his.
> *(beat)*
**TRACY**
Then 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
! Hold it. Long enough that a listener checks whether the tape has stopped, and then a little
longer than that.
> 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
**TRACY**
It's here. It came through. *(beat)* Connie, it came through on a Tuesday and nobody told either
of us.
**CONNIE**
I know. I've got it down as eleven weeks and two days.
**TRACY**
You wrote it down?
**CONNIE**
I write all of it down now.
> *(beat)*
**TRACY**
Twelve hundred dollars.
**CONNIE**
Twelve hundred dollars.
**TRACY**
*(beat)* We should throw a party.
**CONNIE**
Okay, but there's a form for that.
> — music up —
## SIGN-OFF
**ANNOUNCER**
This 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 —