Chicago Is Getting Old Fast

[Karakorum]

Plywood Dave rides again!

 

[Reyne Mayer]

I wonder if Scientology has their own PARKING for that building?

the building has no parking, so no, not unless they've arranged for space somewhere nearby.

thanks for the background on this issue. i've seen a report that members are unhappy with the move because of the inconvenience. and i think those are just the sort of reasons that more recently (the Chicago idle morgue dates back to a big buying binge around 2007) they've been buying office park type buildings in outlying areas.

i hadn't thought about it before, but maybe part of the problem with being unable to open the building is that staff and members don't have much if any enthusiasm for the move. if they're typical they've lost a fair number during the pandemic, and they'd probably lose at least a few more in the move.

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

..

i hadn't thought about it before, but maybe part of the problem with being unable to open the building is that staff and members don't have much if any enthusiasm for the move. if they're typical they've lost a fair number during the pandemic, and they'd probably lose at least a few more in the move.
.

..

If I had to guess, they probably have already checked off 97 of the 100 boxes required to open their exciting new IDEAL ORG.

The only three (3) boxes that remain un-checked are:

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FINDING A TECHNOLOGY THAT WORKS​

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AT LEAST ONE STAFF MEMBER ABLE/WILLING TO CONVINCINGLY LIE TO PROSPECTIVE PCS ABOUT "OT POWERS"​

​

LOCATING RICH PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO GOOGLE​

​

​

...​

 

[The_Fixer]

View attachment 18861
Remigia Sandoval, Chicago Body-Router:

Hello, young man. Could you please help a poor old woman across the street? Why, thank you. You're so kind. Give me that ... er, I mean ... May I please take your arm? Thank you. Tell me, have you ever heard of scientology? Eh, what? Young man, where are you going? Stop! Stop! Ai! Va chinga tu madre ...

Err, no relation to Hope perchance?

 

[pineapple]

Err, no relation to Hope perchance?

No "hope" at all.

 

[onceuponatime]

the building has no parking, so no, not unless they've arranged for space somewhere nearby.

thanks for the background on this issue. i've seen a report that members are unhappy with the move because of the inconvenience. and i think those are just the sort of reasons that more recently (the Chicago idle morgue dates back to a big buying binge around 2007) they've been buying office park type buildings in outlying areas.

i hadn't thought about it before, but maybe part of the problem with being unable to open the building is that staff and members don't have much if any enthusiasm for the move. if they're typical they've lost a fair number during the pandemic, and they'd probably lose at least a few more in the move.

I don't think the local staffs/publics enthusiasm (or lack of it) plays into the decision. Scientology does not care at all what the local staff/public think. After all, all the locals are DBs because they haven't boomed their org to the size of St Hill, and now because of their failure int management is forced to bypass them. Not even joking, I'm sure that is the mindset of many in management, probably even DM himself.

Scientology marches to the beat of DMs drum, the reason Chicago hasn't opened? He hasn't said it's time for it to open. Right now he's busy playing with the Golden Age of Admin program taking place at Flag. Eventually Chicago's time will come, at this point I think the main things they are waiting on are the Chicago execs on the Golden Age of Admin training and enough staff. Really though it's all just what DM wants/says. DM could say Chicago is opening this weekend and it would open this weekend.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

I don't think the local staffs/publics enthusiasm (or lack of it) plays into the decision. Scientology does not care at all what the local staff/public think.

yes, it seems like management will try to go on regardless, but i wonder if locals' disenchantment with a move which makes things that much more inconvenient and expensive to them, is making it that much harder to actually staff and open the org post-pandemic. i think the irrational optimism that Hubbard drilled into management, is going to increasingly run into the reality of a shrinking and aging membership, and other daunting externalities.

also, over at Mike Rinder's, someone pointed out that current local org staffing levels are more or less equivalent to having one domestic servant per household of 2 to 4 people - which would probably be more than most families living modestly would even need. i have never seen a good explanation of what say a staff of 1 to 2 dozen serving a truly active membership of 3 to 4 dozen (and maybe approach 100 BIS given extension courses and other stats inflation) actually do, and it's almost starting to seem like it's compartmentalized in some way so that no one actually even knows, in a strange twist on pluralistic ignorance.

 

[onceuponatime]

yes, it seems like management will try to go on regardless, but i wonder if locals' disenchantment with a move which makes things that much more inconvenient and expensive to them, is making it that much harder to actually staff and open the org post-pandemic. i think the irrational optimism that Hubbard drilled into management, is going to increasingly run into the reality of a shrinking and aging membership, and other daunting externalities.

also, over at Mike Rinder's, someone pointed out that current local org staffing levels are more or less equivalent to having one domestic servant per household of 2 to 4 people - which would probably be more than most families living modestly would even need. i have never seen a good explanation of what say a staff of 1 to 2 dozen serving a truly active membership of 3 to 4 dozen (and maybe approach 100 BIS given extension courses and other stats inflation) actually do, and it's almost starting to seem like it's compartmentalized in some way so that no one actually even knows, in a strange twist on pluralistic ignorance.

Yes, I think they are increasingly going to run into trouble when reality just doesn't match what LRH says is supposed to happen and as they run out of people. They will have to resort more and more to using SO members to man orgs, etc. This will actually improve their efficiency, Scientology is incredibly bloated so they will be able to disguise how much they're shrinking by taking people off of useless posts and moving them to production. But that's only going to get them so far, and in particular they aren't going to be able to hide how much Class V orgs have shrunk. I think it is going to be extremely noticeable over the next few years.

It's hard to give an overall break down of what people do all day on post, it can vary a ton based on post. I'll try to give an example of a random mid level exec.

Arrives at the org
Morning muster
Meets with juniors/seniors to get the day started and production happening
Checks comm basket
Checks telexes
Spends the next couple hours answering some urgent telex/comm
Checks up on juniors to see where they are at on their Quotas
Lunch
After lunch muster
Spends an hour writing letters
Has some sort of product conference with his seniors
Calls someone (reg/recruit prospect)
Checks where production is at
Meets with a public
Goes home

Some posts are also way easier, an auditor/supe will be in session or in the course room basically all day (or doing folder/admin work if they don't have a PC).

I keep stressing how bloated and inefficient Scientology is. A typical 9-6 day org schedule might have 2-3 hours of meetings, 2-3 hours answering comm/telex or doing some random project, an hour or two writing letters and maybe a couple hours of calling/meeting with public. This would seem pretty typical to me. But it can vary a lot based on the post and also the person, some staff will do more trying to contact public and actually produce products. Some will use the bureaucracy to their advantage and spend most of the day writing reports on other staff. In another thread I did a breakdown of a typical 30 person org board, from that you could see that of the 30 only about 5 delivered to public and a few more did sales. Incredibly inefficient, the other staff stay busy with busywork, such as pumping out tons of letters.

 

[PirateAndBum]

Consider that just to fill posts down to the department head level requires:

9 divs x 3 departments = 27

ED +D/ED + HES + OES + PES = 5

DSA + FlagRep + LRH Comm + FBO = 4

Right there you have 36 posts are "execs". Each department if just the posts listed on the org board comprise roughly 10/dept = 270 staff

How many people out of those 306 staff would be involved in delivering service? Maybe 15.

An Idle Org is 95% busy work, 5% production.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

A typical 9-6 day org schedule might have 2-3 hours of meetings, 2-3 hours answering comm/telex or doing some random project, an hour or two writing letters and maybe a couple hours of calling/meeting with public.

thanks, one the one hand it's hard to imagine that much unproductive work, though on the other hand i think it's known how runaway bureaucracies

it sounds like maybe they're in a sort of negative feedback loop where the more staff there are, the more meetings there are and the more bureaucratic work there is, and so the less everyone actually gets done -- feeding the short-sighted perception that they need all the staff....

 

[Riddick]

I first got on lines at the chicago org back in 1987 or so. I had read dianetics and decided to try it out. In the book was a tear out piece that said come in for a free dianetics auditing session. So I did to check it out. The dianetics/scientology at the time was a house in the middle of street which I forget the name of, anyways the house had a big banner in front so I arrived and got my free auditing session. That was the beginning of my adventures. Here we are lots of years later. This was before google maps and I had to use paper maps to get there at the chicago org which was just a house in the middle of a street block.

oh, I remembered, it was on Hermitage Street, sorry for the comm lag. I also joined staff there at the Chicago Org doing some Treasury post, my reg was Sara Wells and the ED was Jesse Wells. Anyways they sucked me out of me money, I actually had some futures contracts of Sugar in the Futures CME exchange if you will, about $10K. I sold my contracts so I could buy the complete Bridge to Clear training, at the time. I sold at a loss, so I could buy training up to clear package. I became very involved at the time because I thought at the time Clear was the state to be, you know all the attributes of Clear defined by Hubbard in Dianetics and scientology.

Later, I checked on the price of sugar on the futures exchange, and it went up a lot, I mean I could have made a lot of money, instead what happened in the long haul of my years in scientology was I wasted my time.

Here's what is kind of funny, guess what, the daughter of Sara Wells joined staff at the SF Org, I dunno, maybe 5 years ago. I was like omg.

 

[onceuponatime]

thanks, one the one hand it's hard to imagine that much unproductive work, though on the other hand i think it's known how runaway bureaucracies

it sounds like maybe they're in a sort of negative feedback loop where the more staff there are, the more meetings there are and the more bureaucratic work there is, and so the less everyone actually gets done -- feeding the short-sighted perception that they need all the staff....

Scientology loves busywork. All these trainees doing the Golden Age of Admin at Flag? Their CSWs were supposedly tougher than the usual OOT training CSW (which is already pretty bad). I would guess on average each CSW took 100 hours of work to get approved.