Revised     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; however, 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 for 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.  Aside from the problems this situation creates in our office, there is an even more important consequence for students.  If students’ files are lost, there is a chance they may be rejected from our university just because we lost their files.  This is obviously unfair to deserving students, and we should do everything possible to maximize the fairness of our admissions procedures.  I know you do not want to penalize any anyone unfairly and that you want to make our process as objective as possible.      It might be suggested that we could institute a rule requiring that all of the folders must be returned to the central filing room and re-filed at the end of each day.  This would force people to keep only the files that they need for a day at a time and encourage them to keep their desks free of unnecessary clutter.  Unfortunately, a rule like this would only slow the office down and cause more problems than it would solve.  People would have to waste time going back and forth to the filing room at the beginning and end of each day.  However, if they could keep the files in their offices, they wouldn’t have to do so much leg work.  I have formulated a plan that solves the problem in our office and saves time.

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 (see the enclosed sample sheet).  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. 

My plan would save everyone a lot of 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.  Looking at the signs on the doors would be much faster than having to go through the time consuming process of entering workers’ offices, interrupting their work, and searching the tops of their desks.  I have a friend who also has a campus job working in the financial aid office here at LSU.  Her office has a system similar to the one that I am proposing, and her staff rarely has trouble locating folders.  She told me that “the working environment in our office is very enjoyable.  We used to waste a lot of time tracking down files from office to office but with our new system, the office is much more efficient.”  The workers in the financial aid office can do the job that they are paid to do because they can find the files that they need when they need them.

My plan will require little effort to implement.  In order to implement the plan, we only need to develop a standardized form (see the enclosed sample form), have them Xeroxed, and distribute them with an explanatory memo to the office staff.  We might want to discuss the forms and procedures in one of our regular staff meetings, but I think once you explain this system, people will respond positively.  I have talked to several people who are frustrated with the present situation.

This plan will also save our office money.  Through the ability to quickly find a given folder, the office will run more smoothly, and so the office will save money because more work will be done in less time.  We might not need to hire as many student workers to do administrative work so that you could shift the financial resources to a place where the money could be used more efficiently.  With the state continuing to scrutinize our budget, we should take every opportunity to save a few dollars that we can.

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.  In other words, the short-term pain of adjustment will be worth the long-term gain of overall time-savings.

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