h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Long ago, I used to work with an engineering contracting company, where I was outsourced to external companies for project work. More than once they hired me for three weeks to fix a three month backlog problem (in a company that was completely new for me).

An old colleague of mine used the scream rule. If nobody started screaming within six months, the work probably wasn't important and could be filed as obsolete.

The scream rule sounds very apt!

I remember reaidng that the Library of Congress got so backlogged with cataloging that they initiated a tier of priority designations. The items in the lowest-priority category had been waiting since 1948.

Everywhere you go, you are likely to find people who are overwhelmed with backlogs. The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles was supposed to download (or is it upload) warnings from other states about bad behavior by Massachusetts drivers, but there wasn't enough staff to put them into the system, so they stayed in boxes -- lots and lots of boxes -- until a highly-publicized catastrophic accident where a driver killed a lot of bikers in new Hampshire > Then the powers that be demanded to know why the Registry had not taken this guy off the road. Turns out the people who were tying to get on top of these warnings HAD NEVER BEEN TRAINED FOR IT! people with adequate training were all busy on other stuff.

Wow, I'm impressed that you managed to manage that way of working Caiman raptor elk

Yes, it is difficult managing a backlog, although it is important to keep an eye on things, as your examples show, paulh

You'll see in the next episode that at first I spent as much time explaining why something hadn't been done as I spent actually doing something, but eventually managed to make some progress

I sometimes read about a hospital that is so overwhelmed by paperwork that file cabinets line the hallways.