The NPS reports
a SUIT column by Chris Jungle

I like my day job for the most part. The work hours are flexible, the pay is good and tasks are relatively painless. They just moved me from a 2 x 3 corner of someone's office to an upstairs spot with a full length desk and seat by the window. I have sunlight and air now. My coworkers have learned to tolerate my occasional bouts of antisocial behavior, and I figured out and accepted most of their quirks. And to top it all off, we appeared to be on the verge of finishing a project phase for the National Park Service which has been going on since before they hired me in August. Then, we had a meeting on Friday.

It appears couple of the terms we have been using for occupants in the NPS may now be unacceptable. We have been calling people who live in the parks "required" or "permitted" occupants depending on whether they qualified for Category I housing or not. Wait, I mean Category I units. We changed had to change "housing" to "units" a while ago. Now they want us to change the words "required" and "permitted." As a matter of fact, we've changed a lot of terms already.

The term "business plan" was changed to "Business Plan" and finally corrected to "Housing Business Plan." I did not question the change. I just did it. Then, there was the altering of the word Realtor to realtor and then eventually back to Realtor again. The main question was whether Realtors deserved a capitalized title. In the end, they apparently did. Other checks included the spelling out of the park or monument such as "Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument" or "Carlsbad Caverns National Park" instead of just "Black Canyon" or "Carlsbad Caverns."

There are eight chapters to the report. The Executive Summary is pretty important as it sums up the whole thing briefly. Chapter 1 is the introduction and is the same in every report. Chapter 2 describes the park and has two maps included. Chapter 3 discusses park employees and has the most tables of any chapter. Chapter 4 describes the market area around each the park and is very boring. Chapter 5 talks about available housing but is the shortest chapter. Chapter 6 has the important final numbers of who should be allowed to stay in the park and who should go find housing in the surrounding communities. Chapter 7 is the Appendix which includes a glossary and a definition for the term "required occupant."

We have to do this same report for 63 National Parks. They all have the same general information, but each park has its own quirks, problems and numbers. It's the numbers that really matter. And actually, it is just one number that is the major concern of all of these 60-80 page reports. Does the park have an excess or deficit of housing units available for employees who must stay in the park? It is such an important number that Table ES-1 and Table 6-2 (which are the same table) have that number listed. It's the only table listed twice. They used to be Table ES.1 and Table 6.2, but we made the change from dots to dashes a while ago.

I check these reports, another editor checks the report, a planner checks the reports, a peer planner checks the report, a content planner checks the report, one of the bosses checks the report, and then the other editor or I check the report again.

These 63 reports had draft versions which Washington and the parks evaluated and sent back changes. They had final versions which were all rejected because Washington didn't think all of the comments were addressed. Of course, some of the comments were extraneous and didn't need any attention, but we did another final for each park anyway.

We recompleted most of the NPS reports before Thanksgiving, almost meeting the impossible deadline of November 20. Now with six park reports left to be completed, they are considering changing the terms "required" and "permitted" occupants in all of the reports. No one had mentioned this before Friday, and now we may have to go through all of the NPS reports again.

Now, like I said, I like my job. But I can't look at these reports any more. I don't want to change terms we've been using since I was hired. I don't want to change the month on all of the footers on every report to December or January. I don't want to think Orwell's vision in 1984 is actually true, and I'm stuck in middle of twisted bureaucracy of extraneous tasks that will never end. I want to be done, I want the project to end, I just want it all to end.

Chris Jungle has learned his next project is to change the term "Tisket" to "Tasket" in a new batch of government documents.

return to the Shut up, I'm talking page
return to the LIES home page
return to the A&A home page