Newsgroups: bit.listserv.history
Date:         Wed, 2 Sep 1992 19:05:48 EDT
From:         "Daniel A. Foss" <DFOSS@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject:      Nonquantifiability of Gross National Futz

Jim Cocks reports a staggering amont of Futz of the sort taking place in the
Office on Company Time. Previously today I had responded to Denis Paz, et al.
with regard to Drinking Conventions and Convention Drinking: Macro-Historical
vs Comparative Cross-Cultural Perspectives, where those who collectively Futz
stagger en masse.

It is incontestable that attending conventions, conferences, meetings, and
interdisciplinary gatherings of miscellaneous cross-occupational synergistics
is part of the job among career academics, learned professions more generally,
and increasingly among lesser trades pretending to professional stature. The
greater one's occupational prestige (on the Humbert-Siegel-Rossi Occupational
Prestige Scale college and university faculty in any discipline are 78, doctors
of medicine are 82, Mr Justice Clarence Thomas in 96) and the greater one's
prestige within the occupation, the likelier the employer is to fund the trip
or even the hotel. And the convention by longstanding convention is understood
to require lubirication as the rental car driven from airport to hotel.

Clearly the instrumental aspect of "conventioneering" for all but job
candidates in overcrowded disciplines is almost exiguous; the convention is
a collective morale-building and solidarity-reinforcing ritual. Also a
fertility rite. In short, licensed Futz, as the determination the distinction
between "socially necessary socializizing, schmoozing, and drinking time" as
opposed to "suprlus soc-sch-drunk time" is utopian. Cancel the Xmas party For
Reasons Of Cost, you are Ebenezer Scrooge; same principle.

In ascertaining the magnitude of the Gross National Futz, which must be almost
entirely confined to office work with the exception of security guardianship,
viz, the security guards who sedulously look the other way when PCs are stolen
from offices in this building by a well-organized unOrganized Crime ring (1) it
is *impossible*, as I have said repeatedly in this column, to determine with
exactitude, nay, even messitude:

1. What work should be done, should have been done, should never have been
started in the first place, has passed the point of diminishing returns, is
high-level sophisticated complex technical work less than optimally done by
not-the-best people, is the best that was humanly possible considering, is
more wasteful throwing good money after bad down the same old rathole the
harder and more energetically the staff works, or whether the personnel making
these evaluations are bunch of imbeciles.

1a. It follows from this that the Futz component is built integrally into the
task.

2. Given that the bosses are competent and the employees are competent, how is
the particular boss[k] to detrmine whether Professor[ij], seen with door open
during office hour typing like greased lighting on PC hanging out at the water
cooler ("dialogue with colleagues"); Futzing by indulging obsessive-compulsive
sive symptom involving LISTSERV lists (one recently reported case had joined 80
[eighty] such lists before seeking treatment), or just playing the remote
descendant of the pinball machine? If so, boss[k] should report to President
John B. Marburger, who in turn will sternly deny tenure to Professor[ij]. But
the latter is him her self unaware of perpetrating Futz, is sincerely convinced
of having been hard at work at highly professional communication.

2a. Suppose, however, University President John B. Marburger is an imbecile?
Inferences from public oratory by President John B. Marburger have been
compared with those of George Bush, President of something else, without
prejudice to either party.

2b. Mario Cuomo, Governor of the State of New York, is the last person
qualified, as witness his record in educational policymaking and decision-
making, to assess the imbecility or otherwise of the President of SUNY Stony
Brook.

2c. Renato Barrahona's last post was not merely pure unadulterated Futz, he had
the nerve to merely send my own lousy post back verbatim with notification he's
sleeping on the job. Letter grade only will suffice next time, please.

3. The Futz component is multiplied by the futile duplication of text and
documents by the interconnection of mainframes in netwoeks and PCs in LANs. The
present document SERVES NO OTHER PURPOSE than PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT for sale as
popularized subverion. There is NO PURPOSE in writing subversion except to
MARKET IT. If you have read this far, you fool, delete.

3a. The Futz factor is multiplied further by high level employees requiring of
low-level employees further burnishing and decorative supplementations to
documents. The low-level employees are however susceptible to keystroke
monitoring minimizing authonomously generated Futz of their own. (2)

4. It is unknown how much Futz in the economy is represented by "surplus
social discipline," that is, the monitoring of behavior of subordinates to
an extent deleterious to efficiency although salubrious to management.

The *order of magnitude* of the Gross National Futz is unknown. Jim Cocks
has probably given us an underestimate.

The Futz, in a very real sense, IS the economy of the United States of America,
which is what I shall tell you until you all unsubscribe.

Daniel A. Foss

1. Senator Pothole (Alphonse D'Amato, R, NY) only knows of "a bunch of guys
in the neighborhood" he grew up with. The computers in question are stolen on
Friday nights and uploaded from the loading dock onto a van parked next to the
car belonging to the security guard on duty. The Political Science Department
has, it is Rumored, regretted its hasty action June last, in that, whichever
floor of this builiding I am committing an infestation of, that floor is
immune from burglary. Tee Hee, sorry.

2. We hereby announce this year's nominee for The President's Typical
Americanism Award: Renato Barrahona's Secretary. (We fear she's forgotten her
own name years ago and won't miss it anyhow.) The President's Typical
Americanism Award is made to one Typical American a year "To honor those who
do nearly all the work for nearly none of the money without complaint, without
even any idea what there is to complain of."
****************
WARNING: These posts will get worse before they get better. Today's posts were
just to kill time while reading an incredibly bad book by the [anticipated]
Advisor In Chief to the Next President of the United States.

Hey Renato, WAKE UP, better you should sleep during the daytime than me, but
I'm going home now.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU