Quota

In reference to law enforcement agencies:

The idea that officers must aprehend at least a certain number of traffic offenders within a given amount of time (usually monthly). Some police departments use policies utilizing a quota system to rate their officers' effectiveness. Commonly thought to be an antiquated and unfair system, it is still in use in some areas today.

quota is also - on multiuser computer systems - the amount of a given resource that a certain user may employ.
Normally, it is about disk quotas. Quotas are pointless on systems with very few friendly users, and they are absolutely mandatory on systems with many users - especially if some users decide to investigate what happens when a filesystem fills up.
Rational deployment of quotas requires a quota policy.

See also hard quota and soft quota.

honestly
I feel despair
when I try
to think about the new schedule

Twenty four slots
Of 20 minutes
See three people
For 40 minutes
Twenty on the schedule

Unasnswered questions
Wake me on Sunday morning
If I am called to a labor patient
Must I make up that clinic face time?
What of holidays?
The clinic is closed.
Night call is nowhere addressed
Will they hire more and more
Who don't take call
Until I am the last woman standing
Red rimmed eyes staring
Numb with fatigue

What of my nearly deaf patient
Who reads lips
May we take forty minutes?
All the fairly deaf elderly?
New parents, anxious
Questions pour out like
Coins from a jackpot win
What of the tearful brokenhearted
And anxious?
I shrink at the thought
Of crushing their hearts
Into twenty minutes

And what if I'm sick?
(sick leave & vacation all one)
It's not a holiday if I'm on call
No make-up day off
If I cancel clinic
For illness
Do I make up those days
A quota of patient face days

I am in the factory
The mines
People are the shirts I must sew
The tons of coal I must load
I must meet a quota

Doctors die younger
Our life is measured out
In patients
I won't let the quota
Kill my love

Quo"ta (?), n. [LL., fr. L. quota (sc. pars), fr.quotus which or what in number, of what number, how many, fr. quot how many, akin to quis, qui, who: cf. It. quota a share. See Who.]

A proportional part or share; the share or proportion assigned to each in a division.

"Quota of troops and money."<-- esp. a share of effort required to be performed, or a share of resources required to be obtained for some common purpose. -->

Motley.

 

© Webster 1913.