Talk:Receiving Internship Proposal Clarity Page

Some stuff to be scraped up and piled into the regular page

I'm suggesting we start a clarity page on the wiki to help us answer questions relating to the receiving position. This would be a place where all the facts regarding the proposal and issues it raises could be presented in one spot.

Shawn has agreed to draft proposal text that reflects what we think we wanted to say at the council meeting.

VERY rough notes follow. I just wanted to get them somewhere before they get lost.

The gist of the presentation to the council was "Committee wants to go back to "job experience" intern position. 24 hour intern, 4-5 hour days. Paid, not a member of the collective."

Some issues raised during the confusing conversation (and some notes about what might needed to be explained in light of these issues):

• The position of interns in regard to the Staff Collective
  • History of how has receiving been covered from opening to today

• Why not a collective position to do this job? (Isn't this a change

from the status quo?)

Here are the types of staff members which should be described:

• Staff collective members, what are they?
• Exploratory interns, what are they?
• Job experience interns, what are they?

• Which type of position is best for this job?

• The Staff Proposal (Note that this was not Dave's proposal, as it was

referred to in the council meeting -- Dave was just presenting it)

• What are the problems the proposal is trying to address?

• Definition of the job needed

• Continuity on the job. How much is needed?

• Burn out position. How long can someone last in it?

• Cost of position

• People person vs. technical person.

• Should interns be paired with staff members? (Always? How much? Both kinds of interns?)

• What is the text of the proposal?

Here's stuff from Receiving Meeting Minutes (3/9):

On Thu, Mar 09, 2006 at 12:28:59PM -0800, liane at freegeek.org said:

>> Receiving meeting minutes 03/09/06
>>
>> recommendation to staff:
>> regular intern with all hours in receiving after initial training in
>> other areas, supervised by one staff person, also a person in Adv.
>> Re.job description needs to include below skills list, but if hardware
>> knowledge isn't there yet, willingness to learn would be fine
>
>  if we decided to go with an regular intern we want to put less
>  emphasis on hardware knowledge and try to bring in a "people person"
>  who is good at organizing. It may be that we have not yet found the
>  right personality type that fits the receiving area and this is a good
>  way to experiment.
>
>  -Dave

From Staff Minutes (3/10): -- nothing recorded about the receiving job discussion --

From HR Minutes (3/10):

• • Receiving position

The receiving discussion group recommended a job experience 24 hour intern for this position.

We discussed the physically demanding nature of the job and how hard it is to do a 5-hour receiving shift. They'd also need a little bit of time for admin to keep up on core email and documentation.

SCHEDULING DECISION: The new intern would have 4, 5-hour days, with the rest of staff picking up about 4 1-hour lunch shifts. They'll also have 2 hours of admin time and 1 hour reuse meeting every week.

Moving forward: We'll need to bring this to council for discussion and, hopefully, approval. Perhaps Vagrant will be able to fill in and do receiving while we're hiring for this position, after Matthew's term is up (the 11th of April? or the 21st of March). Or maybe Matthew would want to sub.

Shawn will ask Matthew about when his term is up and about subbing.

Richard will talk to Vagrant about subbing.

Nathan will present at the council meeting.

DECISION: Make a receiving meeting on A weeks on Fridays at 12:30-1:30. It would switch off with recycling meeting. This group will figure out many of the details in receiving/advanced receiving so the areas can be running more smoothly when the new intern comes in.

There is a statement in the rough notes for the council meeting:

"Most exploratory internships we've had have ultimately led to a job opening. Often, (as Steve or Michael W), that intern has ended up in the job."

Here's the actual history:

Facts: There have been 4 exploratory internships:

1. charno (bookkeeping) -- did not lead to a collective position
2. michael (tech support) -- did lead to a position and was filled by intern
3. steve (store) -- did lead to a position and was filled by intern
4. matthew (receiving) -- still in process

so "most" means two out of three right now, but it could be two out of four or three out of four depending on what happens next.

if you add in the folks that did exploratory internship like work before we called anyone interns you add to the mix:

• nancy b -- led to another exploratory internship
• nathan kinkade -- led to a build coordinator position filled by new hires (not the intern) -- this one's a bit questionable, since I was kind of build coord before nathan k, so the position was largely developed in house.
• ray -- led to a printer coordinator position filled by new hire (not the intern)

• Interns we've had:

Exploratory:

• Matthew (Receiving)
• Michael W (Tech Support)
• Charno (Bookkeeping)
• Steve (Store)

Job Experience, Front Desk:

• Ariel
• Matthew
• Debi

Job Experience, Store:

• Clout
• Sam
• Josh

Job Experience, Receiving:

• Jon

Proto-interns (we didn't call them interns back then, but they were kind of like what we now call interns):

• Ray (Exploratory Printer Program)
• Nancy (Exploratory Tech Support Program)
• Nathan Kinkade (Exploratory Build Program)