The Minority Report - Through The Looking Glass, Darkly

Somewhere in UK Education, a meeting is taking place between IT Manager and two members of the Art department, who, for the sake of anonymity and sanity, we shall refer to as Tweedletwat and Tweedleshit. They are discussing the construction of a new online system, which impinges on the workload of Palmer Eldritch. Eldritch works at a neighouring desk in the same office but is not part of the meeting. He can, however, hear the entire discussion...

IT Manager - I mean, what we've got at the moment is Joan Vice-Principal dreams up an idea, Peter Vice-Principal dreams up an idea, lots of people are all dreaming up ideas. Anything's possible, the issue is time and resources.

Tweedletwat - Yeah, so if we said...what we were after...

IT Manager -  That's what we need, what you said just then - explaining what you want.

Tweedletwat - [plainly not listening] Yeah...yeah, we wondered if everyone would want this, make it for everyone. Make it generic...

IT Manager - And there's also the issue that when the new database arrives, all these sytems will stop working until they're pointed at the new database. [Tweedletwat and Tweedleshit burst into faux-knowledgable laughter]

IT Manager - Everyone's having ideas at the moment and the only person we have to do the work is Palmer. Palmer is the bottleneck.

Tweedletwat - 'Bottleneck?'

Tweedleshit - Yeah. He's a fleshy bottle.

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