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NASA Watch, I am an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Although I, and my colleagues, were supposedly hired for our engineering talent, the current fad inflicted on us by the Director's Office is one of "housekeeping." At present, there has been an office-to-office inspection of state of tidiness of our individual offices. This is not associated with safety issues such as fire hazards (such as stacks of papers reaching the ceiling or cardboard boxes on the floor), but whether the inspecting committee can see clear desktops, neat piles of paper, and papers not being currently used as filed. Comments were made by the committee over things as trivial as whether bookcase covers were closed. Employees cited for violation of "housekeeping" were told that it could impact their annual performance review and threatened their annual salary increase. Of course, there is no official policy about what "housekeeping" is or what it entails. Violators were simply told to get their personal offices more "tidy", as there are further follow-ups by the inspecting committee. As you can imagine, these types of directives create serious disruptions and lower morale for those of us that are trying to efficiently use taxpayer money. As the general JPL management philosophy is pass the buck, it appears this policy originated from the Director's Office. Perhaps public exposure of this outrageous use of taxpayer's money will cause JPL to institute more reasonable policies in the future and concentrate on ending JPL's recent string of failed missions. Please withhold my name and address as obviously this letter would obviously negatively impact my relations with my employer.
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