Down Quality Street

Hello, nice to see you again! Let me take your coat. Did you have trouble getting in? You did? It is terrible, isn't it?

I wish he could have had just a little bit more trouble getting in. No I don't. That would be wicked and sinful. If I have ever thought such a terrible thing, may I be struck by lightning. Youch! That metal door handle! The static in here is terrible; they should turn down the air conditioning.

But it was only a little wish. I only wanted one phone call. One phone call and, Bob's your Builder! I'd be a free woman. "I'm afraid our auditor is going to miss his appointment with you, Ms. Stob. There was an attack by wolves at the motorway service station. Nobody hurt, luckily, but he says he's afraid he won't have the chance to audit your company this year, and he hopes you don't mind too much."

Yes, I am the new Quality Manager, for my sins! You are thinking of Andrew. Yes, he's moved on.

In big companies, I suppose "Quality Manager" is an actual job, with a salary and everything. We are a small outfit, so it is an unpaid and unwelcome supplement to one's programming duties.

How did we decide who lands this privilege? As a matter of fact, we played poker dice for it. And I'd have won too, if we'd played by the proper rules. Where I come from everybody knows that a Gap-tooth Flush is worth more than two pairs.

Now the dice are cast, and I have unwillingly learned a new skill, not recorded on the New Skills register. It's called "Forging ISO 9001 documentation" and it is a bit like updating a big, sloppy, rotten program that's full of global variables. Make one alteration, the effects cascade everywhere.

Here's your desk. You'll find all the 2000/2001 files in those drawers.

Suppose, to take an example absolutely not at random, we ought to alter the sharply named "Preparing for a non-database software program release" procedure. In real life, this means e-mailing the punter his program. However, that wonderfully ample source of life-in-the-slow-lane fantasy, i.e., our ISO 9001 manual, says we supply software on floppy disks. Nobody has used a floppy disk in this building since 1996. There is a better-than-medium chance that the auditor may twig this, since as an anti-games measure the MD sealed all the floppy drives with parcel tape.

But if we did update the manual to reflect the truth, then whoosh! All of ISO 9001 flops out on the floor, steaming. We would need to update a document index here, an internal audit there, a management meeting minute hither, an FDS thither, a problem report yonder, a project issue record jane fonda.

Can I get you a coffee? How do you take it?

Which coffee to give him? Think Verity, think, think. You could give him some of the stuff from the vending machine in the canteen, or you could steal some of Fiona's secret supply of beans and her personal pocket grinder:

On reflection, it would take too long to do the ground coffee thing. I need to get back upstairs to watch him. Maybe I can discourage him from poking his fingers into the software program floppy disk index. If he finds that, we're sunk like a skunk in a funk.

Here you are, white one sugar. Got everything you need? Good.

Help! Did you notice how I used a mental ISO 9001 form to make the coffee decision back there? This stuff is infectious! I am becoming one of Them! One of my colleagues will have to shoot me before I start absorbing other life forms and hole up in Westminster Abbey munching BBC cameramen, as in The Quatermass Experiment.

Now Andrew, the guy who used to be Quality Manager, could just sit here and do it all in his head. He would have covered up the disk fiasco without missing a beat. Made it look easy...

Just a colleague sending me a message. It wasn't important.

Actually, it was important. It was vital that I got to it first. You'd think this exercise was hard enough without Mark typing at a command prompt, from the safety of twenty feet away,

NET SEND VERITY "Uh-oh, guess who has just let go a stinky one"

A fine time for Mark to regress to the age of eight. Thanks mate. Blow three weeks of work for a stupid gag. What will he do for an encore, I wonder? Use his ruler as a mirror to dazzle the auditor with sunshine? Get a fit of the giggles?

It is time Mark learned it is unwise to provoke his Quality Manager. Double audits for him next month, and I'll make sure it is one of the futile, tiresome ones too, like the Personnel Training Index. That'll learn him.

"What is the point of pre-release testing?" Yes. Umm — to try and ensure that the software works?

No. Nooooh. Stupid Verity. Foolish, naïve answer. Watch him scribble in his little notebook. I fell into that. I should have Phoned a Friend, or at least Asked the Audience.

Arrrgh! He's finishing! Surely this is too quick? Can't bear to look...

No, thank you for coming. It's been very helpful. See you again! Goodbye! Travel safely!

Whew! I did it! Only three Observations and an off-the-record Recommendation. A Result.

I've learned my lesson. I won't go through a trauma like that again. This year we really are going to fill in all this stuff as we go along. Starting now.

Well, starting tomorrow anyway...