Do you ever have to fight for your own work?

[workerbee]

I'm re-typing a 7 page spreadsheet because the person who did it knew how to type and knew how to open Excel, but didn't know how to format it or name it so it could ever be found again.  She's left the company (and this part of the country) and I doubt if she could even remember where she saved it or what she called it.  And you wouldn't believe what she (and many others around here) would do in Excel, and HOW they would do it!



This is ADMIN WORK, and I'M THE ADMIN HERE!  It should have been given to me in the first place.  At the very least, people would have been able to find it in my directory!



Does anyone else run into this?  Just because people have computers doesn't mean they know how to do documents and spreadsheets.  I used to love my former boss who gave me things to polish, format, correct, etc.  I wish they would all do this.



Thanks for letting me vent!  I think I can exhale now.





Elaine

[deedeeb]

Bee, this makes me crazy, too!  I have worked for engineers for years and they just LOVE to tinker with the technology ("look, Ma; I'm usin' the computer!") but they don't always know how to use the software.  I would end up with a giant mess to fix when I could have created the original, correctly formatted, in much less time myself.  What I finally started to tell them was, there are enough people of out work -- let me do my job!  My biggest pet peeve is people who use Excel to do word processing, because they don't know how to use Word to do it properly.  Something about looking at the little columns and boxes transfixes them and they are convinced that's the way to put out a phone list, for example.  I know it's possible to use Excel for this, but it's not the best way, or even the only way!

[donnap99]

And what about the people who look at the screen as they type, and put in all those line breaks instead of allowing the program to word wrap?!!  I mean, if that was the way things I did thing, then

I would have awfully funny looking posts on this

board, not to mention that if you change a font or

point size it messes up the whole thing!



(example taken?)

[chris68]

What I love to hate is when you have an accurate list of something and hand it off to someone else to use for their purposes, and you need the info back from them in another format, that info comes back totally wrong!



I've had this issue come up in the last couple of weeks with Vehicle information.  I saw exactly what they did.  We gave them an accurate up to the minute list and we get back pardon the expression, but crap.  And, they took information from every other line and miss matched it with other descriptions and it was a total mess to go thru and we have over 100 vehicles we are talking about.  What a nightmare that has been.  Also the list on their side was not updated from what I can tell in almost a year!  Can ya believe it?  I thought we had a mess last year with transposed vin numbers, but this year is tops!



It's not like they are working from a bad list, we get info from our locations, sent them OUR list and still got it wrong!  How frustrating.



Chris68

[spitfire78]

Oh Worker Bee, I know exactly what you mean.  Years ago when everything was done on the typewriter, I did it ALL.  Once computers came into being, suddenly they're all experts.  My bosses just love doing things themselves.  They used to send me the files to "fix up".  Then, spell check came along and now they think they don't even need me to fix them up anymore.  I cringe when I see some of the things that go out because spell and grammar checks just don't pick up everything.  But they insist on doing it this way.  I hate it but at least it has their name on it and not mine!

[Katie G]

How about the folks who flatly refuse to follow any kind of procedure?  We have a PURCHASING DEPARTMENT.  So what does our department AVP do?  Calls up an office furniture place and negotiates some furniture on her own (she just felt like a office suite, hers was "tacky").  She doesn't even have the authority to spend any of the department's money!  I had to backtrack through the ENTIRE purchasing procedure AND I got bawled out by the purchasing director for not following procedure.  (My response to him was, "Yer preachin' to the choir.")  AVP's reasoning?  "Well, I was trying to save time by eliminating all this {dismissive wave of the hand} procedure crap."



It took twice as long to get the furniture and, oh yeah, now we're over budget! :rolleye

[ozbound]

Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Here it's basically company policy that EVERY letter, proposal or report has to go through Word Processing before it goes out but every once in awhile the engineers/planners try to do it themselves, either because they're in a hurry or just too lazy or whatever.  Then months later someone will bring me the document and ask me to pull it up for them and I have no idea where it is because I've never seen it and don't know where the person who created it saved it (Of course the person who brought it to me assumes that I know where it is because that's MY job, and it's been created from a document with my initials on the bottom!) And usually it's formatted wrong, has typos, etc.  

[msmarieh]

For future reference, you can do a search for the contents of a file. Choose File-Open, then click on Tools, Find. You can change the paramenters - such as file name, contents, date, etc. and then fill in a value to search. This works in most MS Office programs. Helps if you forget yourself what a file was named or don't know it.



Marie

[mlm668]

Ms. Marie -



1.  Good to see you posting again.  You've been gone a while and you always have great advice.  I've missed it.



2.  I know just what you are talking about and the others too.  My boss is great at typing his own stuff.  When he's not comfortable with what he's done or its real important and he wants it double checked he brings it to me to clean up.  Not a problem for me since he's rarely in the office and I'm not always there the same hours he is.  



Then a year later he'll ask me to find a letter he did back when that was about such and such because he needs to do a similar one.  If I can't find it in the paper file (which I guard like a rabid dog - my files "ASK ME IF YOU NEED SOMETHING BECAUSE I CAN LAY MY HANDS ON IT FASTER THAN YOU") I used Word's search feature.  I love it.



All of our jobs are basically changing with all the new technology around.  I guess we just have be flexible and look at our roles in the office in a different light. I"ve been struggling with just that all summer, but I think I'm finally starting to come to terms with it.