The Stupidest Secretary in the World?

I had a female office partner for many years at Los Alamos. Call her Jane Doe for story purposes. I do not mean to be sexist, but occasionally it made a difference that my office partner was female.

One day I returned to my office (I think after visiting another Los Alamos Lab area) and Jane greeted me with a big grin and told me that "You have the stupidest secretary in the world." She then proceeded to tell me a story while grinning the entire time.

This was in the 1980's and our office telephones had neither voice mail nor answering machines. So, we would answer each other's phone when the the other person was not in the office. A man called on my phone with some very technical questions about MCNP (a Monte Carlo particle transport computer program) that he wanted to ask me about. According to Jane the conversation went something like this with the man becoming ever more flabbergasted:

M. Is Tom there?
J.  No.
M. Do you know where he is?
J. No.
M. Do you know when he will be back?
J. No.
M. (silent pause)
J. Can I take a message?

At this point Jane said there was a good deal of hesitation in the man's voice and tone as to whether taking a message might be beyond this idiot secretary's capabilities.

M. Well ... Okay ... I have a complicated geometrical region and I need his advice on how to define such a region in MCNP.

J. No, you don't need Tom's advice.
M. (silent pause)
J. Tom is not the expert on MCNP geometry. You need my advice.

According to Jane, the man immediately recognized his predicament at potentially having pissed off the very person he needed. Jane said that she could almost hear all his mental gears backpedaling as he apologized profusely. Jane took it all with good humor and assured the man that he need not worry as she was amused more than insulted. She then helped him solve his geometry problem,

The Los Alamos Bushy-Tailed Mushroom Security Memo

Shortly before I joined the Los Alamos Lab (1974), there appeared a series of documents about various subjects at the Lab called "The Bushy-Tailed Mushroom" series. The documents were unofficial parodies of things going on at the Lab and were identified with a hand-drawn mushroom cloud in the to/from/subject header of the documents. Unfortunately, I did not think to save a copy as they were often very funny. They were just close enough to reality to be almost believable. Too believable in one case.

For instance, there was a Bushy-Tailed Mushroom funding request in the style of LDRD (Lab Directed Research and Development for high risk but high reward projects)  ostensibly from the "Western Exploration Division" WX  (Weapons Experiments in reality). The proposal was dated in the 1490's by some Italian chap and concerned an ingenious plan to try and reach the East Indies by sailing WEST instead of east. The proposal listed the resources necessary and concluded that, while expensive, if it were successful it would open up a whole New World of trade possibilities.

There was another Bushy-Tailed Mushroom memo ostensibly from Los Alamos computer code developers to Los Alamos computer code users. (I was in a code development group, so the memo hit pretty close to home.) The memo had a list of perhaps 30 useful code notes from the developers to the users. My favorite code note to the users was something like "As usual, a punch in column 37 of the 54th input card is ignored."

The Bushy-Tailed Mushroom memo ostensibly from Lab Security terminated the series when a PhD physicist missed the bushy-tailed mushroom cloud in the memo's header. Security routinely sent out memos with security policies that did not always comport with the scientists' view of reasonable policies, so the fact that the memo was suggesting inane things did not tip off the physicist that this was parody. In this case, it was a little too close to reality ...

The physicist (my alternate group leader by coincidence) read item after item of inane security policies and got angrier and angrier. Somewhere down the list (10 perhaps?) he came across policies for protecting classified material that went something like this:

"A magnetic tape containing a classified computer code needs to be stored in a safe, as well as a computer listing of the computer code, as well as the punched cards associated with the computer code. Furthermore, inasmuch as the punch outs  at the computer card punch machines are a negative image of the computer cards, henceforth the punch outs must be treated as secret classified material and stored in an approved repository (safe)."

The physicist telephoned Security and told Security just what he thought of "their" insane memo.  Thus ended the Bushy-Tailed Mushroom document series.

Ambiguity, "Hostile Work Environment" Law, Intimidation, and Tyranny

The "hostile work environment" laws will necessarily have some gray areas, but at the very least men and their managers could be informed of what definitely is permissible. Believe it or not, many people seem opposed to at least letting men know what is permissible. One women explained that it was better to keep things ambiguous so that men would be super careful because they did not know what was permissible. When I objected that this was pure intimidation she just shrugged and said "so what?" Perhaps this is not a view of the majority of women, but I think it is not an uncommon view. Many women seem very comfortable with keeping men, and especially managers, in ambiguous circumstances. What manager wants to risk a lawsuit?  Absent proper training in what is permissible, the managers are almost compelled to deprive men of any free expression that a woman objects to, even if the law does not really require it. The best explanation that comes to mind is that the resulting intimidation gives women extra power over men, and the women like this power.

I took "hostile work environment" training every year for perhaps 30 years. I can understand that when the training first started that it was likely to need improvement. But, eventually the training should have clearly trained people about what was definitely permissible, what was definitely impermissible, and what were gray areas. Furthermore, as the courts decided more cases, this gray area should have become smaller and smaller and the permissible and impermissible areas corresponding larger.  In 30 years the training never bothered to define these areas. In practice, some portions of the  "hostile work environment" laws function via intentional intimidation. To many people that seems not to be an unfortunate deficiency in the law and training that should be corrected, but a desirable feature to be preserved.

In practice this "desirable feature" tyrannically seeks to curtail even legally permitted free expression  via intentional intimidation. Some people believe that a poster stating that "the current hostile work environment laws are tyrannical and need to be modified to be more reasonable and fairer to men," could constitute a hostile work environment for women.

http://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2015/11/hostile-work-environment.html
http://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2015/12/fixing-abuse-of-hostile-work.html

"What Women Want--What Men Want" - True two decades later?

I found the experiments performed in the text linked below fascinating.

"Do clothes make the man (or woman)?  Can the right costume, income, and occupation make even unattractive men acceptable for dating, sexual relations, and marriage? Can these trappings do the same for women? In Chapter 3 we dressed homely and good-looking men in different types of costumes—including hamburger-chain uniforms,designer outfits, and silk shirts with gold chains—and described them as having appropriate incomes and occupations. The results were startling"


https://www.scribd.com/doc/29085683/What-Women-Want-What-Men-Want


This was written in 1998. I wonder how much has changed since 1998.

Getting on Fifth Base?

I went to high school before electronic calculators and "slide rules" were the calculational devices of the time. My high school chemistry teacher said that we could do the test problems (as well as homework problems) anyway that we wanted as long as we showed the work. We could, of course, use our slide rules for calculations. Well, I had known how to use a slide rule since fourth grade, but I never actually looked carefully at the slide rule until that quarter in high school. Wow. It occurred to me that the slide rule, though intended for base 10 arithmetic could be used for any base arithmetic because the slide rule was just adding and subtracting logarithms.

I had done very well on the previous two chemistry exams and always had time left over, so I decided to do the next chemistry exam in base 5 rather than base 10. I practiced using my slide rule in base 5 a bit before the exam. There were something like 4 true/false questions worth 2 points apiece, and the rest of the exam required calculations. I barely finished the exam working in base 5, but I did finish and handed in the exam. When the exams came back a day or two later, my score was 8 points out of 100 points. There was also a note to see the teacher after class.

After class, the teacher said "Tom, what happened? You did extremely well on the previous two exams." I pointed to my note written at the top of the first page of the exam. The note said "Please note that all calculations and answers are in base 5." The teacher said "You did what!" I pointed out that he had said that we could do the exam any way we wanted. The expressions on his face in the next 30 to 60 seconds as he tried to decide what to do were fascinating. He went from astonishment, to exasperation, to annoyance, and finally to toleration. He finally simply said to convert all the numbers to base 10 and hand the exam back in. It was good fun. Maybe a bit risky, because he could have failed me, but I counted on his keeping his word.

Two or three years later I stopped by the high school and he recognized me at once. He told me that he now tells the class that if they show their work, they can do the exams anyway they like, within reason. And he gave my exam  as an example of what was not within reason. The teacher said that his classes were always amused by the example.

The moral of the story is that it took a little while  for the teacher to appreciate how students might follow his instructions  (and see the humor)...