Another day at the office.

I think that part of our technology agreement with the school system prohibits me from sharing conversations that took place in our staff development today so what follows is what it might sound like if instead of teaching children we were building a house. Beware that it might feel a little Kafka/Gertrude Steinish.

 

Important person enters room and the dialogue begins...

Hello, welcome to the meeting today. We were to be talking about the new housing development but the director of the housing development quit his job yesterday. He did give me his presentation which I will present to you but I'm not terribly informed as to what it means for building houses, as I usually design cities.

What I can tell you is that we hope to have the blueprints by August. They will be in draft form. There may be a delay in blueprints. We will begin building whether we have them or not. One thing I can say for sure is that you WILL NOT be building houses like you did in the past. These new guidelines will change everything you'll ever do. However, we have some friends across town who are building office buildings and they will in general be working with the process of construction that you have used in the past as this process has proven effective and necessary.

Let me touch on a few points, though I'm not sure these will be relevant in a month. Feel free to ask questions as we go along.

Houses af the past are useless. Please discard any thoughts on previous constructions.

Will the houses need roofs?

These houses will be much better than houses with roofs but you might have to put a roof on them. Just not the same one. I can't believe that they haven't done away with roofs in the last 10 years.

Will we still be responsible for landscaping?

I'm glad you asked that. The bathrooms WILL have water we are not certain about the kitchen. Oh, that reminds me, the people working on the office buildings will be using your equipment in the daylight hours. I'm sure with as flexible and understanding as you are, that won't be a problem.

What about the housing inspector? Can we expect regular visits?

As you know, the position of housing inspector was done away with several years ago. The county genealogical society will be coming by periodically to make sure you are hydrated.

Now, I would like all of you to get into groups and make a plan of action for building the houses. I think it's valuable to have all the contractors and subcontractors here. Don't worry about not having the blueprints, just make sure you are doing something new.

(End scene 1. Move to small group scene 2)

(Contractors in italics, sub contractor in regular type.)

Well we've been give our mission, what shall we plan on doing?

We need to be proactive instead of retroactive. We need to make sure the banks are going to fund the project. We need to remind those who are building the office buildings that they will need houses to live in.

Me: what I wish I had said " A riot is an ungly thing... undt, I tink, that it is chust about time ve had vun ..." What I accidentally said and no one made the connection "WE NEED A RIOT" which made me sound a little bit like a crazy person. This means that in spite of my 26 years of experience in building houses, I will likely NOT be asked to be on the project review board. Damn. I think you have to be named Joel to do it anyway.