Page 157 - Just Deserts

Scrubbers

had seen people talk their way into jobs before. Once hired, they
would experiment and improvise on the computer, hoping to get the
hang of it in a hurry. But 3F would not tolerate that sort of
deception. So Molly waited while Ms. Cort put her purse in a desk
drawer, adjusted the height of the chair, and put on the headset.
“Have you set me up as a user already?” she asked.
“Yes. Your ID is your social security number.” Molly watched
carefully as the woman’s fingers flew over the keyboard, setting up
her own user profile in the system. The supervisor was impressed;
despite the new-hire’s youth and her first-day-on-the-job business
suit, she obviously was no stranger to computerized inventory
systems. Had Molly seen her on the street, she would have pegged
her for an academic or technical type, not a data entry drudge. But
looks were deceiving, and times were tough; 3F had no qualms about
putting over-qualified people in low-paying semi-skilled jobs if they
were willing to work and not agitate for unreasonable benefits.
The traffic control operators functioned merely as human
interfaces to software which made all the real decisions. Dispatchers
intercepted shipping orders and bills of lading as they became
available on the floor, and verbally transmitted the relevant codes to
the women upstairs via cordless telephone. Those codes, once
entered and validated by the system, would be processed immediately
by the mainframe computer, yielding an optimized plan for moving
the relevant goods. The controller could see the summarized
documents on the screen as well as the traffic plan, and was charged
with communicating that data to the floor. Each warehouseman was
patched into a locator system, enabling ICS-2000 to determine who
should do which task, delivering which order by what route to or
from which storage area. 3F was one of the original test sites of ICS-
2000, and still one of its most efficient users.
Molly tapped Althea on the shoulder.
“The system, as you probably know, has a lot of features to help if
you get stuck; and don’t worry about making a mistake or causing the
computer to crash: it has all kinds of safeguards to keep you out of
any sensitive areas, like looking at payroll data.”
Althea laughed again, her eyes inscrutable behind oversized tinted
glasses. “Oh, I know all about that,” she said. “It won’t let me load a
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