Communicators burn up tremendous amounts of useful time getting trapped into the significance of what they are routing. True they have to know enough about the office and lines to know where things go, but obviously they can't absorb all the data that is supposed to be absorbed by as many as fifty people working full time. The thing to do with a despatch is to see where it is supposed to go and make sure that it goes right.

Don't pick something up, look it over and put it down again without routing it and getting rid of it. Don't handle a piece of paper twice when it only requires once. Never have a pending basket for a communicator hat. Only have a pending basket for a clerical hat if the communicator is using one.

Don't groan and rail when people have got the lines running wrong. Educate them carefully as to how the lines should run right. The communicator is the Administrative Educational Officer of an HCO Office.

Keep the lines taut. When you have despatches for cable or telegraph or airmail, don't dawdle with them – the moment you lay your hands on them, send them, that keeps the lines taut. Never let a despatch that's supposed to be telexed, cabled, telegraphed or airmailed sit around, even if it's an LT, send it when you see it not when you feel more like it.

Even if a communicator has other hats, his first job is Communications. His whole attention should be devoted to organizing and smoothing lines until they can be used, rather than trying to patch up communication somehow because everything's so busy we haven't time to do it right. It's up to the Communicator to see that Baskets and Message Centres and sorting trays exist, that telephones, cables and mail can be sent, and it's up to him to see that these things are neatly kept in place and adjusted or increased when needed. Don't get a new person in the office on Monday and order some trays for him to be delivered on Saturday - person arrives, you give him trays even if you have to make them out of Stationery boxes, then order the proper ones.

It's up to the communicator to set the pace of the office. If there's something to be done he does it right now, and by snapping the lines along tautly, he or she gives the whole office an idea of speed. If the communicator is laggy, the whole office will start to lag. The communicator speed is eventually matched by the office at large and a wait-a-while type communicator can slow an office down to a point where it will fail.

There are five technical ways to cut a line. There's another one. That's to have a communicator who is grouchy or ill-tempered or apathetic about things. You can cut a line to pieces with growls. You can hack a whole network apart by never putting a smile on it.

If people have a habit of dropping in for a casual chat and standing around an HCO Office without any real purpose, they'll cut up lines just by not themselves being on any lines and stopping personnel from pushing despatches out. People who interrupt people in the office, are interrupting the flow of despatches and work. Keep tabs on who does this, make a list and you'll eventually find it's a very few people. Report them to the Central Organisation as probably a unit dragger downer, minimize body calls, use Tone 40 8C when your hints fall on deaf ears. You can be called to a standstill and a communicator who won't route bodies, won't have lines.

When new equipment shows up – use it and learn it and you'll be better on it than the people who will operate it even if you will never thereafter use it. It's all basically communication equipment, and when it isn't being used right, it slows down your lines. To know how to stop misuse, you have to know how to use, so be an interested audience when new equipment shows up and is demonstrated and then get familiar with it, and if it doesn't get used right by the operator, nag nag nag people until the operator gets cleared on it or is replaced by a competent operator.

Even if you don't file, you had better be able to file and very well. For if you the communicator know all about the files you can do two things, you can get things off your lines properly and you can get them back on again out of files when needed, and there's another reason to know the files, and that is so that you can take anybody from anywhere and teach them to file when the stuff gets stacked up too high. The files may be somebody else's hat but they belong to the communicator and I look at him when the files are bad.

GET CLEAR.