When reporting a stale date to the Director of Comms, bear in mind that a weekend during which a staff member is not on post docs not count as two working days in the routing of a despatch. A despatch dated Friday, October 7th and relayed by the next terminal on Monday, October 10th is not stale dated right there if the terminal was not on post on the 8th or 9th, and did not receive it till the 10th.

In order to pinpoint the exact source of any delay in handling and/or forwarding a despatch, all points through which it passes must not only initial and okay it, but date it as well. A scries of initials tells the Director of I & R nothing as to which of them might be responsible for any delay and necessitates body traffic.

Where action required on a despatch will take such time as to make it impracticable for the originator to receive back his order or request within six days of the date of origin, the person carrying out the order or request must briefly acknowledge receipt of the despatch to avoid a stale date report on himself.

Such examples arc where a Purchase Order is sent to Financial Planning by Purchasing Officer and where Printing Liaison Officer must obtain and get accepted quotes for the printing of materials.

The acknowledgement can be sent direct to the originator and should preferably put in the R factor as to what is being done.

Apparently losing sight of a comm cycle can be upsetting to a staff member. Keep him posted.