An information professional at work

"I can't make head nor tail of this," T.Aldous tells Seth. Seth has made the mistake of giving him the lists of equipment in the throwing-out pile and in the computer room towards the end of an extremely trying day.

"That's the equipment that's being thrown out. And that's the equipment that was in the computer room that's being kept."

"But what about all these?" asks T.Aldous, referring to what appears to be the fifth or sixth generation two or three times removed arising from his orginal asset list.

"That's stuff that wasn't in the computer room."

"Well, where is it?"

"I don't know."

Seth recounts this to me and I weaken and have a look at T.Aldous' list. The original was obviously a corporate asset list not just confined to the library service. The PCs in question belong to the Environmental Health department.