The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

the standards and write jobs based on them. They did this mainly to try and get people promoted, but an unin- tended consequence was that they started to believe that jobs had to be the way the standards described them. The standards became a strait- jacket and we were all conditioned to think that embassy sections have to be structured a certain way based on how the poorly-written and out-of- date standards defined our work. With CAJE, that’s all out the window. Creative supervisors can now design jobs they need, not jobs based on some preconceived idea from a fat book written in 1978. If you need an office manager to run the section’s Web page and be in charge of the post’s alternate command center, you can write the job description up and I can evaluate it for you (in much less time, by the way). But I do agree wholeheartedly with Ludwig that our local employee col- leagues deserve an evaluation system that recognizes all their valuable contri- butions to our overseas missions. CAJE is a big step forward. While it may not be perfect, it is light-years ahead of what we had in the past and will only get better as more posts implement it and post managers learn about its strengths. Michael S. Tulley HR Officer Embassy Rome Serving with Sizer It should come as no surprise to anyone to learn that Harry Sizer capped his exemplary Foreign Service officer incarnation as an efficacious grievance attorney for AFSA ( AFSA News , April). Harry certainly has the character for the job. Harry and I were fellow budding “Arabists” at Embassy Beirut’s Arabic Language School from 1960 to 1961. In those days, “Arabist” was an honor- able designation. In our class, there were many fine Arabic scholars, includ- ing Harry, Dick Murphy, Terry Todman, Morrie Draper and others. True to his nature, Harry was always thoughtful and treated me as an equal even when I was of much lower rank. Please add my congratulations to those Harry has already received on his “sec- ond retirement.” John D. Tinny FSO, retired Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 L E T T E R S 2000 N. 14th Street Suite 500 Arlington, VA 22201 Telephone (703) 797-3259 Fax (703) 524-7559 Tollfree (800) 424-9500