Fun at Fermilab

[Thomas Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

As some of you all might realize, I am not fond of bureaucracy.  

Recently I have been spending some time at Fermilab working on a project
called DeCam, for dark energy camera.  This is a 500 million pixel camera
that is to go on a 4 meter telescope in Chile.  As time went on it seemed
appropriate to give me an appointment as a visiting scientist at no pay. 
It is still not clear that this has any advantages over me just wandering
into the lab and attending meetings and doing some work at home.

All went well and I got a letter offering me the appointment which I
accepted.  It contained a bunch of paper which I just ignored.  Later word
came back that I must attend an indoctrination meeting at 8:30 AM on a
Monday morning in order for me to get the appointment.  I have been a
visiting scientist before at Fermilab and it did not involve any paperwork
or being indoctrinated.  After all, I did work there 26 years.  

I refused to attend the meeting.  I pointed out that I was retired and did
not attend meetings before 10:30 in the morning or any meetings that were
bureaucratic.  This seemed somewhat beyond the ability of the bureaucracy
to accept.  It was a stand off.  To try to break the impasse, I suggested
that I would attend meetings 10:30 or later at the same hourly fee that I
pay a lawyer, but that meetings before 10:30 AM would be at time and a
half.  

They have now countered with an offer to hold a special indoctrination
meeting for me at a time of my own choosing.  Sigh!  I have accepted.   One
can't really fight a bureaucracy, but you can tweak their tails.  So we
shall see.

BTW, this brings up one of my favorite thought exercises.  The free
enterprise system works because there are predators that weed out the
inefficient operators.  If you don't produce efficiently and someone else
does, you go broke and are eliminated from the system.  Thus there are
predators that devour inefficient businesses.  The same does not hold true
for bureaucracies.  There are no forces that seek to destroy inefficient
bureaucracies.  My vote for a Nobel prize.  Invent something to prey on
bureaucracy.  

My fear is that getting me to come to one meeting they will schedule me for
another and then another...   There will be required safety meetings,
purple bisexual people sensitivity meetings, security meetings, fire
training meetings, ...   There will be no end.  

Meanwhile, the camera is sort of fun.  I think it will be the largest
camera ever built, or at least pretty near the top of the queue.  While the
telescope is an old fashioned mount and is huge, space is still a problem,
and heat and all the usual things.  It is nice to get in on the beginning
of a design.  It is still not official, but it looks more and more like it
will get funded.  I am working on the grounding and shielding and low level
analog problems.  

Tom Droege