Bartelby the Scrivener would feel right at home here. Check out the stunning WPRI exposé “Rhode Island government still using typewriters and microfiche” by Walt Buteau. This certainly helps explain why the largest employer in the state of Rhode Island is the State of Rhode Island. Look at how work hours are recorded:
State workers still write out their hours on time cards that are stored in stacks of boxes in a number of government offices.
Every sort of personnel issue you can imagine, from name changes to new addresses, also starts on paper.
The information is eventually typed out, then printed on dinosaur dot-matrix printers.
The five-ply paper gets separated and hand-delivered to other state offices.
And what is the effect of all this on new hires brought up doing everything on smartphones?
State Human Resources Analyst Kelly Durkin-Murray started working for the state when electric typewriters and dot-matrix printers were the future.
Some 40 years later, she’s had to train millennials who land state jobs on how to use the machines.
“I trained a couple of younger employees,” Durkin-Murray said. “They were quite shocked. And their question was, what is that?”
I’m pretty sure their grandparents will be just as shocked.
that is the way it should be.