ORIGINAL VERSION                                                                                   123 Raspberry Street

                                                                                                                  Baton Rouge, LA 70808

                                                                                                                  October 30, 1996

Jack Sprat

Office of Undergraduate Admissions

110 Thomas Boyd Hall

Baton Rouge, LA 70803

Dear Mr. Sprat,

      I am a student worker in the Admissions Office under Mark Smith.  The other day Mark gave me a list of names and a stack of files, and he asked me to go through the list and check off the names of those people whose files were in the stack.  It turned out that there were three files missing.  We then proceeded to look through the file cabinets for them; they weren’t there.  So, we went though about fifteen people’s offices to try and find them.  When we were unable to locate them again, Mark simply said, “oh well, they’ll turn up eventually.”  This bothered me.  It bothered me at first because we couldn’t find the files;  then it bothered me that no one else seemed to see it as a problem.  I have come to realize since then that the reason that it didn’t worry anyone else is because it is a common occurrence.

      We have people come into the office every day looking of files, and half of the time they don’t find them.  The other half of the time they do find them, and they just take them.  They don’t sign them out, they usually don’t return them, and no one keeps track of where any of the files are.  As a consequence, when the time comes to work on one of the files, we go on another “wild goose chase” and often come up empty handed.  This causes us to lose work time and puts the office in a general state of disorder. 

      The office has become disorganized and not as efficient as it could be.  For the well-being of the office and to help keep us organized, I think we should institute a check-out system.  This system can be very simple.  Each office can have a sheet of paper on its door.  On this paper can be a printout with the names of the people whose files are contained in that office.  If one office needs to borrow a file from another office, the admissions officer would simply have to put a line through the student’s name, and write his/her own name to the side.  Then the officer would have to add that student’s name to the sheet outside his/her office.  In this way, we can keep track of where all of the files are at a given time.  There would be no  more searching through papers and files on top of other people’s desks.  All that we would have to do is check the list on each person’s door. 

      I know that many people in the office would consider this to be too difficult to set up and to make work properly.  It is true that a new system will be difficult to get used to, and it may take some time to get the system to work properly and smoothly.  On the other hand, once it is in place and starts running smoothly, it will be a major asset to the office and will make all of our lives much easier.  In the long run, a checkout system will be less of hassle than spending an hour looking on other people’s desks hoping that the file will be there. 

      It might be suggested that we could institute a rule that says that a file must stay in the office that it is in until the work being done on it in that office is finished.  Unfortunately, a rule like that would only slow the office down and cause more problems than it solves.  Many of the folders in our office sit in there for days before anyone has a chance to work on them.  If another office has work that needs to be done on that folder, it would be a waste of their time and ours for it to just sit in our office when work could be done on it.

      Setting up this system would require very little effort, would cost the office nothing and would greatly increase the productivity and organization within the office.  Through the ability to quickly find a given folder, the office will run more smoothly, and the office will save money because more work will be done in less time.

      I have a friend that also has a campus job.  They have a system similar  to the one that I am proposing, and they rarely have trouble locating folders.  This causes the working environment to be more enjoyable, and the office is very efficient and well-organized.  They can do the job that they are paid to do because they can find the files that they need when they need them. 

      Time is money, and right now we are wasting too much of both.  By installing this simple system you can make working in the Admissions Office of LSU a great deal easier on everyone.  In this way you will increase the office’s organization, and consequently reduce the number of mistakes made within the office.  A check-out system for the files in the office will save time, and more importantly, will organize the office so that we can get our jobs done. 

                                                      Sincerely,

                                                      Jennifer Doe