Strokes ... from the Penn

ARMA Records Management Quarterly, Apr 1996 by Penn, Ira A

Several months ago, when the U.S. Government was shut down due to a bit of political insanity, I was deemed "nonessential" and furloughed, along with hundreds of thousands of other Federal workers. Since I had been through three previous shutdowns during the course of my career and since both the President and the Congress had made it clear that we were going to get paid whether we worked or not, I was not the least disturbed by this turn of events and, in fact, found the added days of vacation quite pleasant. I discovered, however, that I was somewhat in the minority.

Many people were distraught because they live from paycheck to paycheck and our salaries, while assured, were likely to be delayed. But many others were troubled, not over financial uncertainties, but at being declared nonessential.

As I watched the TV news reporters interviewing various bureaucrats who could not understand how the world was going to continue rotating on its axis without their being at their desks, and I heard of the psychological hotlines being established to help these people cope with their crises, I decided that the furlough, while a fiscal abomination, was generally a good thing. I found myself wishing that it would extend beyond the Federal government to the entire workforce so that people would get a reality check about which functions were "essential" and which were not.

The doctor in the emergency room is always essential. As long as we are going to keep airplanes flying, the air traffic controller in the tower is essential. In the long run (but not the short) teachers in the classroom are essential. But purchasing officers? Personnel specialists? Records managers? Not now; not ever!

That does not mean that we should not have these positions. Civilizations do not evolve and progress if people perform only the essentials. There are many functions that are not essential which we should continue to execute to make our organizations more efficient and effective and our society a better place to be. In the context of the work place, "nonessential" is not a synonym for useless, it is merely another term for enhancing. People who deem themselves to be professionals should be able to understand that concept.