I just wonder what would have happened otherwise - and how much staff time gets spent each year on manual processing of trivial SQL queries!

 

 

This comment on the front page today reminded me of a great WTF from a few years ago.  We needed a list of all our clients categories of customers, it was quite a long list as it was mainly medical specialties so maybe a few hundred different categories.  We used the category name to match up the categories in our system(no id's available). 

Anyway we requested the list of categories from them and it took a surprisingly long time to do.  When we finally got the list most of the cateories didn't match up, there were blatant spelling mistakes, inconsistant casing, use of the & instead of the word "and".  When we queried them about where the list was from they'd got a temp to look at every value in the select list in their client system and typed it into a spreadsheet.  When we pointed out that we needed the exact values in order to match them up we were told "but they mean the same thing".  They actually became quite annoyed when we told them their list was useless and it would have to be redone and we would be charging them for the time it took me to find the mistakes because it had taken one of the temps "all day".  We then pointed out to the project manager who was meant to be mamanging a rather large IT project that they could just use a query to get the information in about 0.5 seconds, she just stared at me blankly.  That's when we decided to just contact the it department directly.  What amazes me is that someone could sit there all day typing stuff in from on the screen without thinking that there must be another way to do it.  The second WTF is an IT project manager who doesn't know what SQL is.

I'm sure thousands of hours of productivity are lost through this type of stupidity. 

I had one of those data entry jobs one summer.  I used the automated solution, kept my mouth shut, and billed a solid 8 hours a day.  They were happy because the girl before me was taking all sorts of overtime.  (Even on the days that I did it manually, I would finish a days work in about 2 hours).

A day? You're joking... I had a customer who had 3 some nice looking blond accountants that basically wasted a few months retyping invoices that could be imported within a few hours - including the time to write the program as both systems had import and export capabilities, so it was just a matter of converting the export from one program to the import format of the other. In a total of 2 days we finished the rest of their work for the year... And no joke nobody would ever think of it before these 2 asked for a few more hands as they wouldn't be able to handle the increasing amount of work.

In my company I had another few guys (50% were girls actually) who produced incredible heaps of code only because they didn't even stop wondering if there's something wrong with their approach. And the code wasn't really bad or something, just the approach was totally wrong and since there was a much easier way it would be a few lines of code instead of thousands. It's that they didn't knew about it and were afraid to ask so they don't look stupid or whatever reason they had (like they didn't find in google the answer because it was wrong in first place)

Anyway - wasting a day of a temp isn't as bad as wasting a few months without the mere thought of something being wrong passing through their mind...

This is it, next time I take a job, I ask during the hiring for written permission to fix things like this and get on with it.

Problem is, if you go around effectively removing other people's work, you're not going to be popular. Even if no-one gets made redundant as a result, and even if it's making things better, nobody likes an interfering busybody.

m0ffx:

Problem is, if you go around effectively removing other people's work, you're not going to be popular. Even if no-one gets made redundant as a result, and even if it's making things better, nobody likes an interfering busybody.

m0ffx:

Problem is, if you go around effectively removing other people's work, you're not going to be popular. Even if no-one gets made redundant as a result, and even if it's making things better, nobody likes an interfering busybody.

Please tell me how much would I be paid more if I'm popular and how will this get me a promotion in first place? As I prefer getting somewhat more money so I can go skiing in the Alps instead of being extremely popular around the accounting and being called to help type in a few more invoices since the blond colleague can't type too fast. Unless she promises to give me a b***j*b I wouldn't even care about her or being popular. Excuse my arrogancy but how being popular will feed my kid or buy me a car? I was popular in the first job I got about 10 years ago because I was helping everyone and in the end it turned that I HAVE TO because everyone used to ask me and as the company grew I had to help more and more people and had to stay late so I can do MY job. After a few mistakes like that I figured out that I work FOR the company and FOR the customers NOT for it's employees and everyone has to do his own job and use his own head to think on it's own. And since my colleagues don't pay my salary I MAY help them if I WANT TO, but first and foremost I try to do my job better and if I save time and money I usually get some bonus and people are happy. If someone looks stupid or I disturbed him/her because of that - I really don't care. You'll say I'm an a**hole and you'll be absolutely correct about it, but I feel much better and in the end the customers and my bosses appreciate what I do and that's what matters. Unless you want to impress a particular colleague (blond?) to get laid I don't see any other reason trying to be popular... we're not in high school anymore if you didn't realize it...

nsimeonov:

m0ffx:

Problem is, if you go around effectively removing other people's work, you're not going to be popular. Even if no-one gets made redundant as a result, and even if it's making things better, nobody likes an interfering busybody.

Please tell me how much would I be paid more if I'm popular and how will this get me a promotion in first place?

On the other hand, please tell us how much more enjoyable your job will be if everyone hates your guts for being an interfering busybody.

(And please use the return key occasionally. Large blocks of text are difficult to read. )

I am kind of glad that you are not my colleague.

This only to the attitude and the thinly veiled misogynism - I like to automatize stuff myself. Although the purpose of that is to save work, not to antagonize people.

nsimeonov... that's just sad.  Popularity could help you *keep* your job if there are problems.  It could get you raises... if you're popular with your boss(es), which you likely will be if you're increasing efficiency everywhere.

I had a job at a database company (managed other companies' databases) where I spent my last month going behind my back and making my friend's job easier because me leaving was going to force him to take on my workload (which at the time wasn't much... I *wasn't* popular with that boss).  I took a six hour, fifty-step process and made it a twenty minute, three-step process.  Go go gadget Automation!  For the record, I quit, I wasn't fired.

My point is, it never hurts to be popular.  Everyone at that job liked me *except* the boss, and noone liked the boss, and the boss had other problems.  And even though the boss didn't like me, I was able to use the list of things I had automated to ask for (and get) a raise.

of course, by "behind my back" i meant "behind my boss' back".

I'm disappointed. I figured you had taken automation to such a high level that work was self-organizing without you having to be involved at all.

PJH:

On the other hand, please tell us how much more enjoyable your job will be if everyone hates your guts for being an interfering busybody.

(And please use the return key occasionally. Large blocks of text are difficult to read. )

 

are you blond?

Arancaytar:

This only to the attitude and the thinly veiled misogynism

the noun-form concept is misogyny.

I know it looks wrong with the two Ys so close together, but it's the truth! 

nsimeonov:

PJH:

On the other hand, please tell us how much more enjoyable your job will be if everyone hates your guts for being an interfering busybody.

(And please use the return key occasionally. Large blocks of text are difficult to read. )

 

are you blond?

 Or maybe he is blonde?

Heron:

nsimeonov... that's just sad.  Popularity could help you *keep* your job if there are problems.  It could get you raises... if you're popular with your boss(es), which you likely will be if you're increasing efficiency everywhere.

 

I'm afraid you missed my point. I'm not a monkey and I wouldn't entertain colleagues to get popular. I would do my work and interfere with everyone to get it done easier, faster and better. I HATE lazy and stupid people. And if someone isn't happy of me when I point a better or easier way to do his own job it's not my problem. If he/she ignores me I would go straight to his/her boss and speak about that. [[let's use enter here to improve readability for blond people]]

So far I was popular everywhere I worked. A few times I was way too helpful and at a point I was basically doing other people's stuff besides my own for a while just to show them how faster or better it would be if they do what I say. If they don't like me being a smartass - that's not my problem ... yes I had experience like this, they just refused to do what I said and kept wasting 3x more time on the same, so I spoke to the boss - fair enough isn't it? Why I did it? Because those people were supposed to help me besides typing documentation and since they were too busy doing this I had to work overtime to get the job done in time (they were leaving at 5pm SHARP. You tell me if that's fair or not and what would you do if you were on my place?

 

Heron:

My point is, it never hurts to be popular.  Everyone at that job liked me *except* the boss, and noone liked the boss, and the boss had other problems.  And even though the boss didn't like me, I was able to use the list of things I had automated to ask for (and get) a raise.

Sure, but people complaining that you are interfering with what they do even if you help them and point them a better way (being a busybody). I wouldn't even care if someone can safe 5 minutes out of 3 hours or so, but seeing how to save hours or even days of work with a few clicks - I woulnd't just walk away... that's what I was talking about. I wouldn't insist on going through the entire process to see how everyone works and give performance advices (unless that's what I am hired for) but if I occasionally see something wrong that would save hours and hours every day - I will try to "fix" it.

I would tend to agree with nsimeonov.  Though it is generally best to get some kind of managerial approval before messing with people's processes.  Just look at what happened to this guy from the front page a few days ago. 

In fact, last week, we had a presentation (Lunch n Learn -- not taking time out of our day) where one lady showed us a bunch of shortcuts built into MS Office.  I didn't know about most of them, and they'll save me frustration in the future.  Not so much time, but a lot of tedium. 

Hitting enter every once in a while won't hurt anyone.  It makes it more likely for someone to read your entire post.
 

nsimeonov:

Please tell me how much would I be paid more if I'm popular and how will this get me a promotion in first place? As I prefer getting somewhat more money so I can go skiing in the Alps instead of being extremely popular around the accounting and being called to help type in a few more invoices since the blond colleague can't type too fast...

 

That's the worst ASCII art I've ever seen 

belgariontheking:

Hitting enter every once in a while won't hurt anyone.  It makes it more likely for someone to read your entire post.

Good to be politically correct, eh? :)

element[0]:

What amazes me is that someone could sit there all day typing stuff in from on the screen without thinking that there must be another way to do it.

Sadly, in my experience, this is *incredibly* common -- the majority of users (excluding those who could be described as "power users") think nothing of retyping things manually.

The world would be a lot better off if there was a really good, free OCR app that, say, shipped with every OS.
 

nsimeonov:

PJH:

On the other hand, please tell us how much more enjoyable your job will be if everyone hates your guts for being an interfering busybody.

are you blond?

No.

Are you going to answer my question?

nsimeonov:

[[let's use enter here to improve readability for blond people]]

Oh. That's what you were bitching about.

 Are you seriously telling me you expect people to bother reading something presented like this?:

 

 

PJH:

nsimeonov:

PJH:

On the other hand, please tell us how much more enjoyable your job will be if everyone hates your guts for being an interfering busybody.

are you blond?

No.

Are you going to answer my question?

 

Sure, here it is:

First of all - most of the time I tell someone how to stop doing stupid repetetive tasks I see real gratitude in their eyes and believe me some people evne came back with presents for me on the next day (usually candy, chocolate etc, but I got a nice whiskey bottle once).

Second I really enjoyed it when I was sent over to a city nearby (as consultant) to help a few accountants do their job faster and automate the process. They basically refused my advice and were creatively sabotaging it on each step, because they were thinking about being much smarter and since they were older they had the attitude: "who do you think you are? you're a kid and I know better than you how to do MY JOB" ... oh and they thought half of them would go. In this case the company owner sent me over there with specific instructions what to do + if I could figure out some minor details and perhals some similar stuff he couldn't think of "that would be great"-he said. In this case I was treated as enemy but I did my job. I documented everything and left the site a week later. The "BOSS" went a few weeks later and seeing they work the-old-way he instantly fired all of them. How about that?

Once again - you are assuming that I walk around the office bothering other people how to do their job better. That's not even close! But seeing someone who spends days and days every damn week on something easily done with a few clicks by a new report or importing data from another system whenever possible - I wouldn't skip talking about the better/easier way. Sometimes it's worth the cost sometimes not but so far the company owners were quite happy for freeing their employees for other tasks but wasting their time on re-typing sh*t and I didn't hear a single complaint from an employee or something, they were usually asking me "when will you be ready with this damn report and may it be today by 5pm since I have to prepare the stuff for tomorrow".

 

PJH:

 Are you seriously telling me you expect people to bother reading something presented like this?:

Actually it's your choice. But even if I put each sentence on a new line it wouldn't make it less to read, so you either read it or not. I don't see your point here. If you have problems reading it - increase the font :)

nsimeonov:

Actually it's your choice. But even if I put each sentence on a new line it wouldn't make it less to read, so you either read it or not. I don't see your point here. If you have problems reading it - increase the font :)

 

There's so many usability studies confirming that breaking up text with newlines makes it easier to read that i can't even be bothered citing one for you. 

I think the words you are looking for are "sorry about that guys i'll use newlines more often in future" rather than the snide comments, you'll look like less of a dick ;-)