pbray

Today's highlight was a conversation with a coworker. In the following CC stands for Clueless Coworker and PB stands for Long Suffering IT Professional.

CC: "I need you to find out how much these charges were so I can finish programming my spreadsheet."

PB: "I can get the number, but what are you going to do with it?"

CC: "I'm going to plug it into my spreadsheet that calculates the exemptions."

PB: "But you don't need that spreadsheet. I automated the process so the exemptions are already loaded into the expense database. Remember? We talked about this yesterday? I gave you the instructions on how you can use the canned reports to retrieve what you need right from the database?"

CC: "But I still need that number. So I can calculate the estimated adjustments for my reports."

PB (takes deep breath and then begins pounding head against desk): "But... but... but the corporate adjustments have already been loaded. Why do you want to manually calculate an estimated adjustment when you can see the actual numbers?"

CC: "I might need the data. (pause). And anyway, I can't figure out why my spreadsheet is giving me a number that's way too low."

PB: "The official adjustments were $$, which is right in line with our expectations."

CC: "My spreadsheet is giving me a different number."

(Silence as PB decides not to care, and doesn't respond).

CC: "Oh, wait, I figured out what's wrong with my formulas. (beat). So I don't need my spreadsheet after all?"

PB: "No. Use the canned reports."

CC: "Oh. Um, okay."

It took over 20 minutes to convince CC that a) he didn't need his manual report, and b) I wasn't going to help him debug his personal spreadsheet when there were already canned reports with the official answers in them. Keep in mind that CC was the one pushing for the automated process to begin with....

If you stare closely at my forehead, I think it spells out sxdcfvgbhnjmk,l. Backwards.