In the Kingdom of the Blind, the one-eyed man is King. (Warning: Dull.)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Today at work I impressed the hell out of my superiors – and not for the first time.

That sounds boastful, doesn’t it? It’s really not. I can’t really brag about it, because I distinguished myself by being… adequate.

Here’s the deal: When I started this job, I was told that one of my monthly duties was to prepare a report on copier usage. The way I was shown to do this was this: Get raw reports from our two copiers. (Five pages listing client #'s and the copies/scans/prints charged to their account.) Then, using a pocket calculator add the numbers from each report together, and then enter them into a table. In Excel. Me: “What?” (We’re talking about close to a thousand operations.) This was complicated by the fact that the table I was supposed to enter everything into was organized differently than the source reports – so each operation involved hunting around trying to find numbers from all over the damned place.

So instead I spend a little time and prepare a spreadsheet with a printable area in the expected format and a data-entry area so I can just copy directly from the lists, bang-bang-bang. No, “Uh, Wall Centre is 42023,” flipflipflip "Umm… okay, 815. " flipflipflip “And, over here we have 1705.” “815 + 1705 is…” taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap “2520. Got it… okay, now for the scans…” Just a speedy data-entry task. (I will boast that my keyboarding skills make grown men tremble.)

So I did that. Great, yay me. Flash forward one month: I’m ready to turn in my lightning-prepared report by noon on the first of the month. (Unheard of! I am truly a god among clerks, everyone agrees.) As directed, I save it in the specified network directory for the A/R dept. to work with.

…and then I poke around in there. What do I find?

Only other spreadsheets. These ones do the actual calculation of what our clients should pay us for print services. You’ve got a list of our clients, the rates we charge for impression, etc, and whatnot. An accountant referred to my spreadsheet, and manually entered 500 line items into hers. And… this spreadsheet was presented in a third order, so again, you’re hunting all over the damned place trying to find the numbers you’re after. Usually took her a couple of days to get it done, with all of her other tasks. :smack:

I mentioned that I might be able to save the accountant a bit of time, next time.

I copied her spreadsheet, spoojed my data entry area into it, and edited it to take all its references from the appropriate cells.

So this month the Controller had the finished report she was used to hoping materialized sometime before the first week of the month was over – before lunch on the first day. And she will forever more.

Wow, I am awesome! Spectacular! Frigging brilliant!

Well, no. I just had the advantage of coming into a situation that was incomprehensibly stupid. You can’t say that out loud though, so I guess I’ll just have to bear the praise.

What I like about this situation is that the fella that held my job before me was promoted out of it. The guy that shrugged and spent all fecking day using a pocket calculator.

I will rule them, for I am of median intelligence.

This is common, isn’t it?

Please, people: Tell me your tales of basking in the Relative Glory of being a jingle-bell on a carillon of dumb-bells.

2

This made me laugh out loud.

I don’t have a work story, but we bought a new type of cat food out for our sick cat and the others crowded around me as if they were going to get some food. I got out the can opener and towered over them all and crowed, “Behold, for I have thumbs!”

And they all just looked at me.

And then I realized it had a pull-top.

I honestly think the furry bastards are still laughing.

3

:: applause :: Bravo! :smiley:

I’ve encountered a couple of situations like this as I settle in at Dartmouth College, specifically as regards upcoming courses and who is teaching them. While the “solution” wasn’t exactly something I was charged with doing, the following incidents have occurred:

  1. There was talk of a certain course, P110, being offered, and several of us planned to take it. But in talking to a professor about it, he said he knew nothing about it being offered. So I went to the department admin assistant and she was able to tell me, via her meticulous records, that it was initially going to be offered but in fact will not be. Had I not found this out, the other grad students would have tried to register - and failed.

  2. Then there was talk of a math course, M66, being offered, but no one knew if we would get credit for it as a graduate physics course. So once again, I went down to the department admin assistant and she told me who to email to check on it. Turns out we do get credit for it. See how easy that was?

  3. But the best one has to be this. Before either of the other two, there was talk of a course that will be offered next term, P106. An older student warned me away from taking it, because he said Professor B will teach it, and it is commonly known that Prof B sucks at teaching. But that other professor told me that Prof A is teaching it - and Prof A is good. So I asked Prof A: he said he would be teaching it. Then I checked online: Prof B. I brought this to the attention of Prof A, who was taken by surprise. Prof A then spoke with the department chair, only to find out that Prof B will be teaching it.

Let me emphasize: this was a surprise to Prof A, who thought he would be teaching the course. :smack:

I almost wish I hadn’t found out, just to see the hilarity that would have ensued on the first day of class. (And no, I’m not taking it now that I know it’s Prof B.)

4

I got a pat on the back and a gift card for exemplary filling in of test-scripts last year. It cracked me up, because all I did was follow the clearly written instructions, but I heard nothing for weeks except how beautiful my test-script filling was. Various layers of management would see me in the halls and say “I hear from IT that you did a lovely job on those test scripts.” There’s not much to it, but evidently being able to write my initials and the date clearly are skills that will take me far in life.

That still fills me with a certain amount of anal-retentive glee.

5

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Stupidity is everywhere. You saw a way to get rid of some, and kudos to you for that.

6

90% of life is showing up on time and doing what you’re told…

7

Now think about this carefully ye of ***median intelligence * **. did you just fall into the first circle of hell by being competent at a nitwit task? As a hard charging do gooder boy scout, are you naive enough to comptently fix all the outstanding nitwit tasks that need unfucking? Will not calculator boy bask in the glory of your unfucking nitwit tasks and gain all the credit? Will this not mean you remain the unfucker of nitwit tasks even longer and be *denied * the real credit of promotion?

Grasshopper, you must learn it is not who unfucks the fucked up situation, but rather who can take credit for managing the unfucking. You may now become indespensible as the unfucker, but beware the curse. Tread very carefully as you bask in the glow of median intelligence as those dumber than you may be idiot savants at weaseling out of real work and shoehorning you into doing the heavy lifting. Do not be lulled into a false sense of rising slightly above mediocrity as that may keep you chained forever in servitude to calculator boy. Never underestimate the power of the corporate Borg to trap the competent into cleaning up all the shit.

8

I do that kind of stuff for a living. People come and ask me, “would it be possible to get a report of all the widgets we sold last year?”

And I ask them, “Would you like to know who bought most widgets? Would it help you to know what payment method they chose? Would you like them mapped so that you can see where your customers are? Tell me what you want the report for and I may be able to suggest some other summaries that could be useful.”

My staff and I are considered to be quite God-like, in fact we are banned from the Performance Excellence Awards because we would win it every time.

But all it boils down to is the fact that most people have no idea about manipulating data - they are used to looking at thousands of individual items and, when someone can pull out the useful data without the useless data it is like a magic trick.

9

Sounds a little like my job. I’ve largely given up complaining about the terrible grammar and syntax of others since I discovered I can make beaucoup de bucks properly implementing grade 9 English class on their texts.