Enrico Coliseum was a hard working, honest, sober, citizen with another unusual trait, he had a dream of being an actor. Enrico’s dream looked real when he was accepted into the local theater group. The group was a collection of amateur and semi-amateur thespians who had acting dreams similar to Enrico. They planned to produce a sequence of plays to provide roles for all of the dreamers. A big disappointment to Enrico was that there never seemed to be a part which the directors felt would fit him. The unfilled roles were of doing the actual work and chores, needed for a play’s presentation. Enrico was gracious in undertaking most of those duties. Enrico was actually the most critical element in the success of the whole theatrical undertaking though he was mostly unrecognized and unthanked.
The biggest production of the year used-up most of the available cast but left Enrico out in the wings because he was essential for all of the grunt work. Additionally he inherited a new responsibility: Enrico had to get permissions for several issues to support the proposed play production, 1) a permit to use the city auditorium, 2) a city permit to sell snacks to the patrons at the production, 3) a city permit to sell wine to the patrons at the production, and 4) a notice was to be published in the local paper.
Unfortunately, the city had just implemented an automated system that replaced the experienced, speaking, live bodies who formerly interfaced with the public. The conservative new Mayor had adopted this approach to meet his campaign promise of lowering taxes and reducing the size of the city government. By getting rid of most of the city staff except for cronies and coffee-fetchers he did cut down the payroll. He hadn’t counted on the fact that he now needed more sophisticated computer infrastructure and the essential computer boffins. He managed to cover the skimpiest measure of these needs from park maintenance budgets.
The beginning of Enrico’s permit path started at the city phone tree, a general menu of all the departments the city previously directed with humans. Now each function had a code number and a caller was directed to press a number to access them in a second segment. The second segment had a list of third level functions that had to be accessed to get to more specific information. Usually a query was expected to find its goal with an average of five subdivisions, each of course had nine choices. The final payoff was not an answer but the email address of a specific computer sub-program that was supposed to lead to an automated answer to the inquirer’s needs.
It took Enrico many frustrating hours to get through all of the phone dialogs. Enrico found that it was necessary to have two phones and a recorder to complete that part; one phone to listen, and one phone to punch in all of the numbers as the phone-tree wasn’t very patient. The instructions were too fast. The recorder could replay them without a fresh start. Communications were difficult because the phone instructions required all one’s attention and number-punching facility to get through the system. Enrico had a flash back to a high school science project that was to train a rat to navigate a labyrinth with penalties of electric shocks and rewards of rat-treats. He noticed that he was sweating profusely after the first hour in the telephonic phone tree labyrinth and he remembered that his rat had died of a heart attack in half that time in the rat maze. Enrico had to next encounter the major complications of the forthcoming computer labyrinth.
The computer’s first instruction was to fill out and submit a form with all the possible identification data – name, address, age, sex. how often, race, weight, eye color, phone number, email address, driver’s license number, etc. Usually the already overworked computer responded to this within 55 minutes. The result was an identification password, to be used to address a specific question to the computer.
When Enrico succeeded in getting his first computer contact he was eventually rewarded with his identification password. His name, Enrico Coliseum, had been scaled down to six characters: Cap E, dot, cap C, lower case o, l and i or “E.Coli”. It did have an association of which the computer was not aware! Every time Enrico addressed the city computer as “E.Coli” he was immediately assigned to the Health Department computer program which ordered him to report circumstances and perform sanitation requirements. After his fourth re-excursion through the computer warnings, the computer sent a message to the police department that someone was not obeying Health Department regulations. Enrico ended up in court but his only penalty was lost time. The judge was sympathetic because his staff was trying to deal with the same computer on a number of issues.
Enrico still had a deadline but he did a little rule stretching for the first time in his life and out-did the computer:
First, Enrico had the play accepted under the auspices of a church. The play theme did kind of fit so he didn’t feel too guilty. Churches got free use of the auditorium too, so the actors saved $100 per showing which would have exceeded historic revenue.
Second, Enrico worked a percentage deal with the owner of a taco wagon. The taco wagon already had a city and a county license and the novelty of those products at an evening play attracted so much attention that attendance blossomed on the second showing. The cut Enrico had negotiated exceeded any previous snack results.
Third was the wine. Although sales law required purchase of a liquor permit for each showing, Enrico found it was legal to just give it away. It was arranged to provide a glass of either red or white in exchange for a theater ticket stub. The free glasses went down quickly creating a thirst and an exuberant mood. Ticket stubs were available for sale at $7 each for people needing a second, third, or fourth glass. The wine supply was exhausted the first night but was doubled on subsequent nights. Enrico set the limit at that level, as he calculated that the average blood alcohol content would be .06% and the number of designated drivers would be in short supply with more wine.
Fourth was a requirement for newspaper notification. This was a no-brainer since three columnists of the local paper covered the events plus the weekly glutton-column that covers all social events involving either food or wine.
Enrico’s techniques were soon on the grape-vine and emboldened the senior community. Many seniors were still using dial phones and had no computer training nor inclination. They had been unable to communicate with the town. A California Bare Flag group was formed which captured the mayor, stripped him down to his skivvies, wrapped him in several spools of red duct tape and carried him out beyond the city limits. The police found him there after a tip.
The Mayor was hard to find because the outer roll of duct tape was sticky-side out and there were so many autumn leaves stuck to him he was well camouflaged. Similar leaf pile accumulations were common after blowers were outlawed.
The mayor resigned in a snit thinking he’d be urged to reconsider. Didn’t happen. The city’s Aldermen stepped back a term, rehired staff, re-instituted the taxes and modified the charter to eliminate authority concentration by a single person.
Enrico got a starring role in the next play.
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