Paperless Office

I think we have made great moves towards going green. We seem to be doing away with paper and working only in ether. Sound travels in ether too. "Have you moved to the renovated wards?" the Boss asked on phone. "We are waiting for your letter" I replied. The Boss had asked us to submit a plan for moving, and we had submitted it a month ago. It seemed he had wanted us to move back then, but there was no written word to that effect as we had requested. "What do you mean?" he seemed angry. "I have sent two letters to that effect a month ago." "We have not received any in the dispatch" I said politely as ever. As if we would dare to disobey administrative command to move, even if we loved to work where we were and our patients loved being two or three on one bed. The dispatch people must really be understaffed to not send us such important letters from the Boss. Or they might be selective, because I keep receiving semi-trash from them regularly. "I am asking you to move now" he said. "Now will you shift?" "We will" I said. We must indeed be going paperless. administrative orders seemed to be becoming verbal. But then I recalled that one of the previous Bosses had asked us to something about Residents' schedule verbally, and when a question was raised allegedly from Delhi, that Boss had asked me to produce her written order. When I had stated firmly that it had been her verbal order, backed by the person in charge of the schedules, that Boss had told me to put down such verbal orders on paper and sent them to her for affirming. I could not see why she could not dictate the letter to her steno and send it to me. I had suggested that, but she had firmly declined. So I called my clerk a block away, and gave instructions about the arrangements to be made for shifting the department back from the transit area. Then I dictated a letter to be sent to the Boss for affirming the order to shift. I could not be paperless. Ten minutes later the Boss called again. "I have sent two letters on these two dates" he said, reciting the dates. "However I am sending a third letter now." "OK" I said. It would have been easier to send a photocopy of the previous letter, which I would have been able trace and see who had dared not send it to me when the Boss had wanted it to reach me. But the Boss knew administration better, and there must be a reason for not doing so, I thought. Ten minutes later the Boss' secretary called, asking us to send someone over to collect that letter. "Is it a copy of a previous letter or is it a new letter?" I asked. "It is a new letter" the secretary said.