You’re definitely being too nice. He needs to have his ass chewed out for a few of the things he says. For example:
Newbie: “I’d like my education on my business cards.”
You: “Are you serious? What kind of a jackass wants to put a bachelor’s degree on his business cards? People will make fun of you.”
Newbie: “Hey, did you talk to the boss about my lunch?”
You: “Hey, we’re busy, and I really don’t consider your lunch demands to be a high priority. We’ll talk about it when we get around to it, and we’ll probably decide that you should suck it up and quit your whining. Maybe when you actually start contributing something around here, you can start requesting consideration for things like that.”
Newbie: “In my experience working with large spreadsheets…”
You: “First of all, you don’t have any experience. Second of all, 23 lines is not a ‘large’ spreadsheet, no matter how many hours of incompetent flailing it took you to type up.”
And for good measure: “I don’t care what you think about the spreadsheets. I told you to do it this way, and now you’re wasting both of our time by doing it two different ways. If you want to keep your job, you’ll do what you’re told.”
I had the talk with my boss this evening after work.
He started off by telling me his wife has told him to cut the guy loose, but his mindset was to pull him into the office on Monday and give him a talk along the lines of
“R. and I have had a discussion, and I’ve got to tell, you first few days were terrible. You are arrogant and a slacker and need to pull yourself in line”
He was hoping that would fix it.
I took a chance and put the 5 total spreadsheets on the boardroom table, his 4 days worth of work. I looked at my boss and said “Even if we get his attitude in shape and he stops taking so many breaks, we then have to work with him to get him a work ethic too.”
I told the boss that I have big plans for the company and I wasn’t looking forward to babysitting a guy I think is going to be a liability in the end and a waste of my time.
Boy, I’m glad you’re in Calgary. We’re looking for someone and I’d hate to have this twat fall into our hands. Tell him the job market in Toronto sucks if he asks, m’kay?
Damn right! I don’t even won’t you riding down my road you slacker!
Rebekkah glad your misery is soon going to be over. BTW, would you mind telling newbie the job market in the southern part of the US sucks big time, ya know, just in case he’s think of emigrating? See, we got enough of those already and most of em seem to come to work at my place.
This doesn’t seem to work in Excel 98 (and if you don’t think anyone in the business world is still on Excel 98, have I got news for you!) Is there another way to do this on older versions? 'Cause I would love to be able to do this with a couple of keystrokes.
Rebekkah, if you need an outside opinion on spreadsheets, I can offer my services (10 years as an administrator, most of them spent in accounting departments). As a professional, my discretion is assured. For the record (which you already know), 23 lines barely even qualifies as a spreadsheet. And good for you guys if the new guy is getting the ol’ heave-ho.
To be fair, I did call in sick on my first day of a job once. Of course, I was sick with the flu when I went to the interview, and was running a fever of 105 when I got home. I was still running 102 on the day I was supposed to start. I opted for staying home and not infecting my coworkers. Then again, I half killed myself for that job over the next 4.5 years, so I suppose I get a little slack. I heard later that my permanent replacement (the temp I trained only lasted through one of the controller’s temper tantrums, even though she deserved it) said “I don’t care what <Arianne> used to do, I’m not doing it!” And, as if calling in sick wasn’t enough, my glasses broke on my way in on the first day I actually made it in to the job. My mother had to bring me my backup glasses. I was mortally embarrassed, or so I thought at the time. :smack:
I’ve been wondering about this for months! Heck, even if I don’t have experience in a specific task or field, I have a brain and can learn. I even have a letter around here someplace from the Air Force commending me on jumping into a ‘sink or swim’ situation and pulling it off when I was working for a contractor. I taught myself Easytrieve Plus because there was a need for someone within the department to be able to write them without having to send stuff to the programming department.
And yet no one up here seems interested in hiring me. It’s a moot point now, since I’m getting into the videography thing; but it’s frustrating to be an intelligent guy (if I may say so without appearing immodest) and not even getting an interview.
Oh, is this to get the shading off, not onto alternating rows? Cause I know how to do that. I thought it was to get the shading ON, which I don’t know how to do in Excel (and it would be really cool if there is a way to do that, because selecting each alternating row manually is a pain in the tushy.)
Featherlou - set up a section of alternating colors. Then highlight 4 rows. Copy. Move down - Right click “Paste special” - Formatting only. Copy larger section, repeat. Copy larger section, repeat. Pretty soon, you are applying the formating in chunks of 50 rows or so and it’s pretty fast.
You don’t need to do the progressively larger sections of copying.
Just shade one row and not shade the row above or below it. Select both rows. Copy. Select the entire area you want to format. Paste Special - Format only.
Voila!
Or, if you don’t even want to do a few extra mouseclicks: Shade one row. Select the row and the one below (unshaded). Click on the “Format Painter” button (looks like a paintbrush that’s mostly yellow and grey). It’s usually appears on the toolbar by default, but it’s available as an option for the Formatting toolbar. After clicking “format painter”, select the entire section you want to apply that formatting to. Done!
