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Being on HQ staff (for Just Thinking)


Linda Z
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Some bosses at the place were not mean like the others but the whole place was terribly mis-managed. Here's my experience on staff - it was actually a lot of fun for me but great insight into how poorly managed the place was.

After I had been out of the way corps for a year, vpw asked me to come on staff at hq as assistant to Mrs. Owens. She was the registrar for the advanced class. She had 2 assistants and herself working on this. The whole job could have been done by 1 part timer. Plus she refused to use the computer system in any meaningful way.

Now vpw's idea was that I would be groomed to take over her slot. But his son Don was working there (can't remember if he was on the board yet or not) and he had another guy picked out for that position - Nik Maxson. Seems logical to me that the head honcho and his underling (Don) would discuss this BEFORE bringing someone off the "field" to a staff position. Especially since all the real "work" of the organization happened on the field. But NO.

So as it turns out, thank god Don prevailed and I didn't stay in that position. I understand Nik is still there and am so glad I'm not in his shoes.

In fact I was relieved in mid-year [probably due to the fact that I didn't get along well with Mrs O.] and I was asked what I wanted to do for the rest of the year. I asked if I could work way builders and get a bit of experience in the building trades.

They had me doing a little bit of everything. But I was never trained. I put a bunch of electrical outlets in the OSC building and after I'd done many many of them with out any training or supervision, someone just happened to see how I was doing it and it was not up to code. OOPs. Did they re-do them? nope.

As one point I talked to Art Poling, the head of the department about the disorganization. He apparently had experience in managing these kinds of jobs but was not allowed to impliment systems that most organizations use because it impossed too much discipline on the people above. He told me of change orders made on a whim that wasted tons of money and time, and later had to be un-changed because they weren't thought through enough. Seemed a common occurance.

At one point I heard later that Howard Allen asked that all spending over $50 be approved by him. I thought, if he can't train people well enough, and has nothing better to do with his time than oversee that kind of stuff, he really is in the wrong job.

Just my 2 cents. This was in 1978 or so.

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quote:
He told me of change orders made on a whim that wasted tons of money and time, and later had to be un-changed because they weren't thought through enough. Seemed a common occurance.


WOAH! To hear them talk about how they make decisions you'd think they were perfect decision makers because they did think things through thoroughly, almost to the point of "analysis paralysis", and, of course, God was telling them the right decision.

I always heard they accounted for every penny and spent our abundant sharing oh so carefully and wisely.

Yet another myth debunked by first hand testimony. Geez, we were so stupid on the field. I know I believed everything they told us. icon_rolleyes.gif:rolleyes:--> Just pass the kool-aid this way, would ya?

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quote:
Originally posted by Belle:

quote:
He told me of change orders made on a whim that wasted tons of money and time, and later had to be un-changed because they weren't thought through enough. Seemed a common occurance.


WOAH! To hear them talk about how they make decisions you'd think they were perfect decision makers because they did think things through thoroughly, almost to the point of "analysis paralysis", and, of course, God was telling them the right decision.

I always heard they accounted for every penny and spent our abundant sharing oh so carefully and wisely.

Yet another myth debunked by first hand testimony. Geez, we were so stupid on the field. I know I believed everything they told us. icon_rolleyes.gif:rolleyes:--> Just pass the kool-aid this way, would ya?


Slowly the truth rears its ugly head.......

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Steve!, I was in on the Betamax decision. Happily for my conscience I was stumping for VHS. At that time it wasn't clear VHS would be the prevailing consumer technology. All that was clear was that VHS machines were cheaper.

Joe C---r of AV argued for Betamax on the grounds of quality...who cares about the consumer machines being cheaper, the Word™ needed the Best© quality. He didn't get that the decision was for the people. Or that the master was a poor quality boring-as-heck 16mm film. I bring this up because that was typical of the inward-looking myopia that governed much decision-making.

(Sorry about that one, Hope & John!)

Another example was their supreme arrogance in dealing with outsiders. They, of course, were unbelievers. As such, they were imbued with spiritual cooties, weren't fit to breathe our air, and didn't know squat (never mind how many eons they'd been in their business). As I was in Purchasing, this attitude was a daily problem for me. Note that not everybody dealt with vendors in that manner. But the lack of cooperation cost us magillions of dollars. Many of our common practices were downright unethical, but that's okay, they're 'body & soul' (never mind many, or most, of them were professing Christians).

When we approached our largest vendors asking them how we could change our practices to make it easier (and cheaper) for them to do business with us, many fell out of their chairs. We found that on many categories we were paying the top possible price, because we were such an unyielding always-right pain to deal with. A little cooperation dropped prices considerably. Dumb arrogant know-it-all idiots!

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I am both amazed and amused that the Betamax thing still irritates people. I was not involved in the decisionmaking, but I did work for Joe C shortly before the decision was made. I owned a portable VHS recorder and camera, one of the very first available and I tried hard to convince Joe that VHS was the way to go.

In my humble opinion, I think that it was nothing more than a 5-senses decision by Joe to go with a Sony solution. Joe loved Sony equipment and was comfortable with it. Sony catered to the industrial/institutional market with a more rugged machine than was readily available in VHS at the time. Knowing Joe, the issue of believers being stuck with an unsupported format probably didn't even enter his mind. Believers were supposed to be praying, witnessing, and studying, not watching worldly videotapes.

Joe, more than most at HQ, realized the consequences of making a big, bad financial decision and probably felt that "no one would ever be fired for buying Sony". In retrospect, he was right.

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Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant to say that he wouldn't get fired for the decision, not that he was right.

I fixed both VHS and Beta machines. I thought that the VHS transport was a much nicer mechanical design, plus VHS always had substantially more recording time. Joe (and HQ) was wrong about Beta. No doubt in my mind. Just trying to add some background to the discussion.

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Or that the master was a poor quality boring-as-heck 16mm film.

My first clue that something was dreadfully wrong at HQ was when I found out there wasn't a master nor an interneg to the PFAL film. At the time, an apprentice corps person was trying to splice together bits and pieces of old PFAL films to create a new "master" for film-to-tape transfer. PFAL was the "crown jewels" of TWI and they didn't even bother to keep the master or the interneg in a safe.

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Based on all of these responses, it seems that the corps at HQ weren't any swifter than the ones on the field. That's sad.

I always got the impression that it was the command structure and the arrogance of leadership rather than individual swiftness.

There were some very smart people working at HQ, and most of the people tried very hard to do the right thing and worked very hard to do their job. As others pointed out, there was a lot of attitude amoungst the upper and middle leadership that "we are doing the right thing and everyone else is screwed up"

Here's an example that still burns in my mind. The A/V shop was in the OSC building right next to the children's fellowship area. In the hallway next to us was a large power distribution panel. The cover to the panel had been off for months, exposing the live conductors inside the panel.

I walked over to Way Builders, found the head electrician and politely asked if the panel could be covered (a 5 minute job as the cover was leaning against the wall next to the panel). I was informed in no uncertain terms that they knew the cover was not installed, and it was none of my concern that the cover was off, and that they would put the cover back on when they thought is was time to put it back on.

These days, I'd just pick up a screwdriver and put it on myself. That would have guaranteed me a reproof session back then for mucking with something outside my department.

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I've mentioned this before, but probably a few of yas weren't around, so I'll reiterate.

You know that cute little gazebo out in the middle of ROA grounds?

Can you hazard a guess as to how much that cost?

How about $12,000 for design expenses alone? Yes, for a building with no plumbing, no wiring, no windows, no doors, no insulation, hell, hardly even any walls! It's basically a spiral staircase with a roof over it.

And the actually construction costs when it was finally completed? Over $40,000! And this was at a time (late '70s IIRC) when a fairly nice 3bdrm house could be built for less than that.

And the wonderful OSC building was originally roofed (along with parts of the Indiana Campus) in a sprayed-in-place urethane foam insulation which then had a latex coating sprayed over it (the actual "roof" part of the application).

Well it worked for a few minutes, maybe, and then promptly started to leak. Years of slap-dash measures to try to keep the rain out finally gave way to the whole mess being scraped off and a proper roof installed in it's place. Yeah, that cost a few dollars.

And the stuff being stored in the OSC? Yeah, all that stuff that was needed for the "move of THE WORD"? Mostly leftovers from past construction projects (which should have been returned for credit), tools and equipment that was seldom (or never) used, and - naturally - lots of storage space for VIP staff members.

TWI became more and more simply an out-of-control bureaucracy, with a gazillion left hands not knowing what the right one was doing.

Yeah, Godly, un huh...

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My work experience at HQ during my interim year was one of long hours. Being one of the few 19th Corps and also on Staff during those years of 89 – 90, I was assigned to the A/V dept to work. Being the lone interim corps guy to A/V dept., I had my hands full not only doing the low level stuff, but also my collateral duties, all the on ground Flags, Wierwille Barn security, and the coordination with of the BRC building.

Most days began before 6 A.M. making sure the flags were up, ensuring that the BRC was ready, coordinating with the 18th Corps A/V people to do their A/V at their meals, doing A/V at Lunch and then doing my regular work my wife hardly saw me. Usually that was Sunday through Friday with a lighter load on Saturdays. And they ended around 11 at night. And this was the normal schedule, what made it interesting was the events that happen that I had to adjust to cover the above mention jobs as well.

Working for A/V was not an easy task, if any thing went wrong, we heard about it. One case in point, I remember on a Corps night in the OSC when one of the cameras went bad. Everyone was upset on how it looked and could I fix it. It was the main camera with a straight on shot of Martindale and the second camera was a wide shot of the crowd. Realizing there was nothing I could do with the main camera, I switched to the second camera. Other than shut it down, there was nothing I could do with it. But I still got grief over it. The next day, the main tech there looked at it and said one of its tubes went bad during the production. And did I get an apology from any one, not that I recall. Except consolidation from the main A/V teach that it just went out during Corps night and there was nothing no one could of done. Must have been my weakness in believing. Consider this; Stuff happens they say, except there where it was seemed more people like to do amateur scatology.

Twig fellowship, yea, right, I rarely attended Twig during that time frame as well. Why, because, I was doing my assigned chores. My wife figures I was putting in an average of 18 hour days during that time. What was I thinking as the song goes.

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HA, Geo. Yeah, OSC storage was a joke. For a long time the ill-fated No-Way, errrr, Snow-Way was kept there. Wonder how many grazillion $ went into THAT crazy thing? Way more than the PigHopper, errrrrrrr, TwigHopper, which f'sure was pushing 100k in cost.

To their credit they did some clean-out giveaways. I picked up a neat old tube amp that way. Also just sitting in giveaway was the ultimate iconic/nostalgic trophy: that hideous yellow beaten glass swag lamp featured on the Piffle film set. I picked it up, but thought better of it. I went & got JP to see if he wanted it. At first he said naw, but then he took it.

Imagine what that puppy would bring on ebay...

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Originally posted by George Aar:

You know that cute little gazebo out in the middle of ROA grounds?

Can you hazard a guess as to how much that cost?

How about $12,000 for _design_ expenses alone? Yes, for a building with no plumbing, no wiring, no windows, no doors, no insulation, hell, hardly even any _walls_! It's basically a spiral staircase with a roof over it.

And the actually construction costs when it was finally completed? Over $40,000! And this was at a time (late '70s IIRC) when a fairly nice 3bdrm house could be built for less than that.


Holy mackerel!! I could build one NOW for a couple thousand, if that!

And the wonderful OSC building was originally roofed (along with parts of the Indiana Campus) in a sprayed-in-place urethane foam insulation which then had a latex coating sprayed over it (the actual "roof" part of the application).

Well it worked for a few minutes, maybe, and then promptly started to leak. Years of slap-dash measures to try to keep the rain out finally gave way to the whole mess being scraped off and a proper roof installed in it's place. Yeah, that cost a few dollars.

On the way home from the ROA in 81, the VW bus that I was a passenger in broke down (hah! novel concept!) first as we were about to leave nk. There was a garage outside of nk where the owner was a wayfer, and he was *very proud* of the fact that the roof of his garage was insulated with that spray-in polyurethane, and then latex. And he said, "Yeah, it's the same stuff they'll be using in the OSC, because it was so successful here! it's revolutionary!". I've seen the same stuff used successfully other places - it just has to be done right. Which obviously didn't happen with the Overpriced Second Class building. (After that breakdown, we broke down again in Kearney, Nebraska, and I hitchhiked back to Portland, OR, and ended up getting back 4 days before everyone that stayed with the VW bus. The owner of the bus, Bob Lacy, was really a great guy, but his bus had some problems.)

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Great story about the gazebo. I heard rumors about the OSB roof but never the whole story.

Speaking of spray-on, when I worked in the OSB, around 1980, there was a guy whose job was to spray a foam insulation on the beams and the underside of the roof. That poor guy had to have the worst job of anyone at HQ. He had to work up high in the heat, humidity and still air and spray this incredibly obnoxious foam goo, which he got all over himself. Anyone remember what I'm talking about.

What about Joe Coulter's "white noise in the EOB" project. He started this project that entailed installing speakers, lots of speakers, over the heads of the workers in the EOB. The plan was to play white noise over the speakers to mask out conversations and machine noises and make the workers more productive.

After the A/V department spent hours crawling around over the heads of the workers installing speakers and running wires, VPW snarled at a staff meeting "Joe, it doesn't work, take it out!"

Edited by jim
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Actually,that sprayed on foam roof with a urethane coating is an excellent roof when applied correctly...About half the flat roofs in Az. currently use it...I don't remember if the way hired contractor's to apply it or if they had way builder's do it....Either way,it was still a rather new product back then with a few warts in the system....It probably turned out not to be a good roof for the midwestern climate...

Regarding Beta vs. VHS,I had heard that Beta was a much better system and appeared to be the better way to go,but then Sony shot themselves in the foot by attempting to monopolize the Beta market through patents and such,forcing their competition to promote the VHS market,and eventually it became the most popular...Gotta admit,tho,the way made the right choice on cassette over 8-track...

I was a way builder on my interim year('79-80)and it was a fun year...Although looking back,it may seem on paper that with all the cheap $75 a month labor at their disposal,working heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men, the way would have been able to save lots of money on building costs....But in reality,I think they got what they paid for...

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  • 1 year later...
Oh - but I thought that no detail was ever overlooked [tongue in cheek] - - after all, look at all the perfectly pointed toilet paper that greeted you in your most intimnate moments!

And all those points were perfect! I spent many hours folding toilet paper. I am actually very proud of the work I did on Housekeeping staff. And those toilets were all scrubbed with "God's Love" One thing I was never sure of was when I was told that leaving the toilet seat up after cleaning it was "smily and inviting"

Seriously though, Housekeeping had it's .... together. I started in Founder's Hall and there was a process that was the height of efficiency, it had to be as that building was scrubbed top to bottom every day. Another thing that was really great was that as I was being taught how things were done, I was taught the reason behind doing it a certain way. Such as, which outlet in each conference room would allow me vaccuum the entire room without having to replug in the vaccuum.

btw, I still point the paper of every new roll :wave:

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