#Stately: "Time Vacuum" Reason for Low Output

by Audrey O'Rouke
February 28, 2007

A State Administration of Human Services and Health Related Stuff employee has blamed famed physicist Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity as the reason her work output is so low. 56-year-old Janus Kelly McGuire cites a "time vacuum" because her number of processed claims is considerably lower than anyone else in her four-person unit.

"Well, I really think it's wrong to find fault with people who do so much more work than anyone else," McGuire said in an interview Thursday afternoon. "I mean I have worked here longer than anyone else in the group - sixteen going on thirteen years - meaning that I have worked for the state for close to sixteen years but with this unit for only thirteen and seen numerous changes that I have been part of because other people have retired and I have been around to see what originally happened."

When asked to explain the "time vacuum" process, McGuire said it starts every morning when she arrives at her office. "I come into work and probably pay more claims than anyone else. But what happens, you see, because this has happened once before and I was acquitted when it went to an appeal with Human Resources, is that the more work I do than anyone else, the more quickly I get it done, causing a vacuum to form and somehow slow down the passage of time such that it appears I do very little work on a monthly period. This is very wrong: I probably end up doing more claim processing than anyone else here but because of the faulty physics in my office, as well as the extreme cold temperatures and faint scents of insecticide, it appears that I am not doing my work but I really am. I also organize chain letters."

McGuire's director supervisor, 31-year-old Kirk Dickinson, first heard about the assertion when he presented McGuire and the three other administrative technicians with their monthly status reports, showing the number of incoming and outgoing phone calls they received as well the number of claims paid and how much banked annual leave they had used.

"She returned with all this physics bunk - quoting Stephen Hawking and something about Israel...I think it was Israel. I really don't know. All I could tell her was that according to the report I got from the system, she paid 100 claims for the month. The next highest number was greater than three thousand."

Dickinson has since tried explaining to McGuire than she must make it a point to do more to justify her position but his attempts were met with similar staticy remarks.

"One time it was that the bus was in motion and then supposedly stayed in motion, forgetting to stop and allow her off. Another time she mumbled something about the sum of the minutes of any two phone calls is equal to the total time of the remaining time off the phone and hence why her phone wasn't working. I don’t know what to make of her anymore.”

McGuire dismisses Dickinson’s responses as excuses. "You know it's hard getting here every morning on time. I have car troubles as it is but then you should see the cars I have to drive around with on the way over. Someone should have a camera in my car so you can see. There was once a semi that pulled over in front of everyone and nearly had an accident that really would have made me late.”