Employee Handbook Updated; No One Can Find the Previous 14 Versions

The Department of Human Resources released Version 15 of the Employee Handbook on Friday, prompting immediate concern when staff discovered that the document references policies and procedures from versions 4, 7, and 11, none of which can be located in any departmental archive. 'Version 15, Section 34.2 states that overtime procedures follow the framework established in Version 7, Appendix C,' said HR specialist Tanya Redline. 'We have no copy of Version 7. We have no evidence that Version 7 ever existed. But Section 34.2 is very confident about it.' A departmental search for previous handbook versions yielded the following results: Version 15 (current), Version 14 (found in a recycling bin), Version 12 (found on a retired employee's personal thumb drive), and Version 1 (framed on the wall of the director's office, dated 1987, mostly illegible). Versions 2 through 11 and Version 13 are unaccounted for. 'Our records management practices in the 1990s and 2000s were, in retrospect, not ideal,' conceded Records Manager Philip Archive, whose own position was created by a policy in Version 9, which also cannot be found. The absence of prior versions has created practical problems. Version 15 contains 47 references to earlier versions, including a disciplinary procedure that 'supersedes the process described in Version 4, Section 19' -- a process no current employee has ever seen or can describe. 'We're essentially governed by a document that cites ghosts,' said union representative Barbara Chapter. HR Director Louise Pagination has announced a project to reconstruct the missing versions from 'institutional memory and reasonable assumptions.' The project is expected to take two years and will itself be documented in Version 16.