Author Topic: Overheard at Work  (Read 13253162 times)

infogoon

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14500 on: August 19, 2016, 02:05:51 PM »
Wow - either powdercoating got really expensive or she got taken for a ride.

I think it's the latter. The local bike co-op will powdercoat a frame and fork for about ten bucks.

Of course, if I was selling stuff to people who blew their money on that Yeti stuff, I'd jack up the prices too.

Papa Mustache

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14501 on: August 19, 2016, 03:28:25 PM »
I wonder if she had the powdercoat shop relabel the cup as a Yeti so everyone could see... ;)

Marvel2017

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14502 on: August 19, 2016, 03:34:55 PM »
Middle Manager at my company can't afford to replace the broken upstairs central AC unit in his home (about an $8,000 fix). Installs cheap window units instead. In a 6,000 sqft $1,000,000 house. :/

nnls

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14503 on: August 19, 2016, 04:01:10 PM »
...
"Didn't you get it two years ago?"
"Yeah, but it stopped working with my iPhone and it was so infuriating I had to replace it."

It was a car.

that is ridiculous.

TexasRunner

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14504 on: August 19, 2016, 04:05:22 PM »
...
"Didn't you get it two years ago?"
"Yeah, but it stopped working with my iPhone and it was so infuriating I had to replace it."

It was a car.

that is ridiculous.

Please PLEASE tell me this was some form of programming/tech company.  :D

MonkeyJenga

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14505 on: August 19, 2016, 04:13:50 PM »
Oh god. We just got Sharepoint. I expect this will start becoming way too common ...

Yeah, I really do have this same conversation every so often, almost verbatim. Usually it's more amusing than annoying, but it has a way of making a bad day worse.

Side note: I always enjoy teaching tricks and best practices, so if you ever have any questions that I might be able to help with, please feel free to PM me. That goes for anyone here. I haven't had a ton of formal training, just enough to dive in and keep learning via experience (5+ years now).

Do you have any experience with Knowledge Repository and its associated issues? My team is having a hell of time with that thing.

LeRainDrop

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14506 on: August 19, 2016, 04:31:25 PM »
Our condo building manager sends me Word doc reports where at the end of each line, she presses enter and then tabs in for the next line, so if you need to make any edits, then you have to re-do the f-ed up formatting.  She also has no idea how to use Excel, despite having had to use it for 5 years, so she prints out the spreadsheets and then complains that the typing is too small to read on paper.  I blew her mind the other day when I pointed out that the spreadsheet had two tabs of information, not just one.

Update:  Since I posted that, she sent me back a revised version of her report, as I had sent her my changes in "tracked changes."  She did not know you could "accept" the changes, so she printed out my version and spent an hour trying to type all my changes into her document, which obviously was less than accurate, not to mention inefficient.

SoccerLounge

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14507 on: August 19, 2016, 05:57:01 PM »
Yeti cups make me laugh in particular, because what Yeti has done (aside from cannily aiming themselves at the demographic of Dudes Who Think Brand-Plus-Bucks Equals Desirable) is apply vacuum flask, or "Thermos", technology to areas it hasn't been used in as much before, such as coolers or koozies.

But there are already shitloads of vacuum-walled cups out there!! Yeti cups are not even a little bit better in performance than other quality vacuum-wall cups, and cost WAY more. It's very amusing to see how far blind brand loyalty stretches.

Cyaphas

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14508 on: August 19, 2016, 06:28:46 PM »
Yeti cups make me laugh in particular, because what Yeti has done (aside from cannily aiming themselves at the demographic of Dudes Who Think Brand-Plus-Bucks Equals Desirable) is apply vacuum flask, or "Thermos", technology to areas it hasn't been used in as much before, such as coolers or koozies.

But there are already shitloads of vacuum-walled cups out there!! Yeti cups are not even a little bit better in performance than other quality vacuum-wall cups, and cost WAY more. It's very amusing to see how far blind brand loyalty stretches.

Seeing the shitrs and hats people pay for with 'yeti' on them is very disturbing. They're paying extra money to advertise a brand of... mugs?

I've had quite a few people brag about spending $40+ on Yeti mugs. One guy was even so bold to brag about his $100+ yeti cooler. These people vote and are considered adults.

Greenway52

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14509 on: August 19, 2016, 07:12:53 PM »
So a Coworker showed me her bill from her hair salon today. I was astonished to see it was $220! It turns out it was just for getting her hair coloured. I asked her if there is a special occasion coming up and that's why she spent that much. She said "No", it's just the place she has been going for a long time, and she says that she gets her hair coloured 5 times a year. That's $1,100 per year just on getting her hair coloured!! Keep in mind this doesn't even include the amount on money she spends on getting her hair trimmed ... I didn't even want to ask how much that is!

Her defense: Her husband gets his hair cut once a month and his hair cuts are $50 per cut. So he spend $600 per year.

So between the two of them they spend at least $1,700 per year on hair (really it's more than that cause I don't know how much she spends on her hair cuts).

They make good money ... two of them together probably gets about $140k gross, but still! As someone who cuts my own hair, and haven't spent any money on going to a hair salon in nearly 10 years, I was just astonished.

bebegirl

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14510 on: August 19, 2016, 07:46:31 PM »
I was astonished to see it was $220!

Yes, this is actually the main revenue source for any hairdresser. That i why I do my own hair color at home. My haircut costs $80 but I wear long hair so show up for my next appointment in approximately 6 months.

Prices in hair salons are crazy.

Shalamar

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14511 on: August 19, 2016, 08:53:05 PM »
I used to get my hair did and coloured and whatnot about 8 times a year at $150 a pop.    When I turned 50, I thought "I've had enough", and I stopped getting it coloured.   Then I thought "Why pay megabucks for the cut?", and I went to UltraCuts instead.   I now go about 6 or 7 times a year, and it costs about $25 each time.     A coworker asked archly "Don't you care about looking your age?"   I said "I'm over 50 now.   I don't care if I look over 50.   And I'm saving money like whoa."

LeRainDrop

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14512 on: August 19, 2016, 10:21:12 PM »
Oh, look, one of my facebook friends just posted the perfect meme for this discussion:

dragoncar

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14513 on: August 19, 2016, 10:28:06 PM »
I'd never heard of Yeti cups until this thread.  Stop giving me status anxiety!

Also, if I'm paying $50 for a haircut, it better come with a few cocktails.

http://www.omaha.com/go/each-haircut-comes-with-a-free-cocktail-at-new-omaha/article_c48e5290-c280-11e4-b98a-3b79e16e5564.html

MrRealEstate

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14514 on: August 20, 2016, 12:07:52 AM »
I am very tired of older employees who can't do the basics on a computer despite using computers daily since the 1980s. I didn't really pick up using computers 'til the 90s and I can do most anything with them.

I've come to realize computers scare a LOT of people. Also, they dont understand you can type your issue into youtube and watch a 5 minute video tutorial on 90% of your computer issues.

The factory I work at has a contract with HP and their guy is only here once a week because he services 5 factories. If anything happens on first shift, they just let the problem go until I come in at 10pm. Not in my job description, but is definitely going to become a negotiation point soon in a raise conversation.

pancakes

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14515 on: August 20, 2016, 03:11:36 AM »
I was astonished to see it was $220!

Yes, this is actually the main revenue source for any hairdresser. That i why I do my own hair color at home. My haircut costs $80 but I wear long hair so show up for my next appointment in approximately 6 months.

Prices in hair salons are crazy.

I found a place that does women's cuts for $23. The haircut I had prior to that (3 years ago) was $90. I wouldn't rate one higher than the other.

I dye my own hair too. $20 of henna does 2-3 applications depending on the length of my hair. I dye it every two months or so, so pretty inexpensive over a year. You could argue it is still an unnecessary cost though.


Papa Mustache

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14516 on: August 20, 2016, 06:39:29 AM »
...so she printed out my version and spent an hour trying to type all my changes into her document, which obviously was less than accurate, not to mention inefficient.

Can't copy/paste???? Occasionally I still meet adults who don't know this is a thing that any computer from the 80s and up can do... Hell, my kids know about this. 

kayvent

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14517 on: August 20, 2016, 07:09:41 AM »
...so she printed out my version and spent an hour trying to type all my changes into her document, which obviously was less than accurate, not to mention inefficient.

Can't copy/paste???? Occasionally I still meet adults who don't know this is a thing that any computer from the 80s and up can do... Hell, my kids know about this.

My brother writes reports for a living. He told me earlier in the week that he only just recently learned that CTRL+F allowed one to search for text. I don't blame people who don't know these things; the OS makers really have a fun time at introducing unintuitive keyboard shortcuts and gestures. Unless you know a keyboard shortcut exists or you expect it should exist, your only hope to learn them is if someone shows you.

Basenji

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14518 on: August 20, 2016, 07:51:08 AM »
Argh! Why can't people use Google or Help to figure stuff out?  I'm 47 and geez I'm no expert, but come on!

Email exchange
Me: Here's the figure you requested in Illustrator to put into your presentation.
Doofus who has a job title with "communication" in it (as in a specialist who helps people put together presentations and external comms): But I need it in a file format I can use! Wah!
Me: Open the ai file using Acrobat and save as pdf or jpeg or tif, whatever you need.
Doofus: Wow! You are awesome, I learn something new everyday!
Me: [checks count of working days until FIRE]

Inaya

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14519 on: August 20, 2016, 09:21:24 AM »
Our condo building manager sends me Word doc reports where at the end of each line, she presses enter and then tabs in for the next line, so if you need to make any edits, then you have to re-do the f-ed up formatting.  She also has no idea how to use Excel, despite having had to use it for 5 years, so she prints out the spreadsheets and then complains that the typing is too small to read on paper.  I blew her mind the other day when I pointed out that the spreadsheet had two tabs of information, not just one.

Update:  Since I posted that, she sent me back a revised version of her report, as I had sent her my changes in "tracked changes."  She did not know you could "accept" the changes, so she printed out my version and spent an hour trying to type all my changes into her document, which obviously was less than accurate, not to mention inefficient.
I once asked a boss to use track changes. He didn't actually use Track Changes in the doc he sent me; he'd manually colored and underlined his additions and manually colored and struck through his deletions.

snowball

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14520 on: August 20, 2016, 10:10:25 AM »
CW: Something is wrong, I can't do (Thing) for this customer.
Me:  (pulls account up, and the standard notification screen that comes up when the customer has amounts owing pops up)
Me: Press the button labelled (Thing) to get past this screen.
CW: Oh.  You know, I'd really like more training on this.  Are there instructions for it?
Me: ...

It's ONE BUTTON.  Labelled as the next step that you want to do.  Do you really need instructions to remember it's there?!  And there are only a couple of buttons to choose from on that screen anyway!  It is not a complicated interface!

The really sad thing is, this is not the first time she's asked me that question and I've shown her that button.  But instructions wouldn't help, they'd just confuse her more, because this step obviously isn't necessary every time, and she doesn't handle "if/then" steps very well.  The real problem is that she doesn't actually understand what's going on and why that screen exists.  I've explained what's happening, because if she *understood* it she wouldn't need help, but it just. does. not. compute.

(I don't think she's actually listening - I think she stops paying much attention as soon as you start explaining or showing her something, because she automatically dismisses it as a computer thing she can't be expected to understand.  I don't think she's naturally this incapable, but I don't see a way to get past her shield against learning something, especially since she isn't consciously aware she's doing it.)

wenchsenior

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14521 on: August 20, 2016, 10:15:12 AM »
Our condo building manager sends me Word doc reports where at the end of each line, she presses enter and then tabs in for the next line, so if you need to make any edits, then you have to re-do the f-ed up formatting.  She also has no idea how to use Excel, despite having had to use it for 5 years, so she prints out the spreadsheets and then complains that the typing is too small to read on paper.  I blew her mind the other day when I pointed out that the spreadsheet had two tabs of information, not just one.

Update:  Since I posted that, she sent me back a revised version of her report, as I had sent her my changes in "tracked changes."  She did not know you could "accept" the changes, so she printed out my version and spent an hour trying to type all my changes into her document, which obviously was less than accurate, not to mention inefficient.
I once asked a boss to use track changes. He didn't actually use Track Changes in the doc he sent me; he'd manually colored and underlined his additions and manually colored and struck through his deletions.

Ok, that is really funny!

BlueHouse

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14522 on: August 20, 2016, 10:35:06 AM »

I am very tired of older employees who can't do the basics on a computer despite using computers daily since the 1980s. I didn't really pick up using computers 'til the 90s and I can do most anything with them.
oho boy, this is a tough one for me. 
First let me say that I've never experienced this kind of problem at work.  I've been working with software and specifically OS software since the early 1980s.  If I could go back to using DOS commands, I might do it in some cases.  But I've generally kept up well with the software and applications that I've used over the past few decades.  I don't have many problems there, but as an example, I rarely remember that I can search using voice rather than my fingers.  In fact, sometimes it's harder for me to compose sentences with my mouth rather than my fingers!
 
The social media aspect of computing though seems to be problematic for me.  A major reason is that I just don't care to spend a lot of time using or learning Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever the other SM apps are.  After trying to stay in touch with and communicate with my younger relatives though, I am a complete embarrassment!  I don't really do Facebook because I find it to be a colossal time suck and also because I truly am extremely private about what's going on in my life and I wish others were more so. 

When my nephew stayed with me, our best communication was over Snapchat.  I'm pretty sure he got more pictures of my feet than anything else.  When I wanted to send something to him, I wasn't practiced enough with it to be efficient and I missed all the moments I tried to capture. 
I think what younger people need to understand though is that taking the time to get proficient at something so that I can communicate with one age group, doesn't help me when 99% of the rest of my contacts communicate using a different medium. 

So while I get the frustration and accept the jokes, I'm also putting myself into the category of people who have pretty much given up on new technology when it comes to social media platforms.  There is so much to keep up with and it rarely benefits me. 

Now get off my lawn, you young whippersnapper!

Taran Wanderer

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14523 on: August 20, 2016, 11:07:52 AM »
Our condo building manager sends me Word doc reports where at the end of each line, she presses enter and then tabs in for the next line, so if you need to make any edits, then you have to re-do the f-ed up formatting.  She also has no idea how to use Excel, despite having had to use it for 5 years, so she prints out the spreadsheets and then complains that the typing is too small to read on paper.  I blew her mind the other day when I pointed out that the spreadsheet had two tabs of information, not just one.

Update:  Since I posted that, she sent me back a revised version of her report, as I had sent her my changes in "tracked changes."  She did not know you could "accept" the changes, so she printed out my version and spent an hour trying to type all my changes into her document, which obviously was less than accurate, not to mention inefficient.
I once asked a boss to use track changes. He didn't actually use Track Changes in the doc he sent me; he'd manually colored and underlined his additions and manually colored and struck through his deletions.

In my job I often dealt with the converse of this - someone wants a report or spreadsheet that summarizes a lot of information from various sources, and they want it on short notice. "Oh, by the way, I am giving a presentation to Group X, could you pull together an overview summary of Y?" 

I was so sick of this at the end, I actually said "do you know how long that will take?"
Them: "Oh, can't you just run a report?"
Me: "No, information a is in database a, information b us in database b which is not connected to a, etc. and I have to redact irrelevant records and reformat the output and add information that is not in any of the databases"
Them: "Oh" <blank stare>

These are all databases the fuckers were supposed to be using themselves, and information they were supposed to know, and they all had administrative assistants to run auto reports from the software they were supposed to know how to use anyway.

If it was 'just running a report' they should have known how to do it themselves, and even if they didn't, their admins knew how to run it. Glad I am out of there!

The really disturbing part of this is that this is information that they are then presenting as their work.  They get the recognition and personal advancement.  You do the work.  Nice, huh?

esq

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14524 on: August 20, 2016, 08:25:07 PM »
...so she printed out my version and spent an hour trying to type all my changes into her document, which obviously was less than accurate, not to mention inefficient.

Can't copy/paste???? Occasionally I still meet adults who don't know this is a thing that any computer from the 80s and up can do... Hell, my kids know about this.

My brother writes reports for a living. He told me earlier in the week that he only just recently learned that CTRL+F allowed one to search for text. I don't blame people who don't know these things; the OS makers really have a fun time at introducing unintuitive keyboard shortcuts and gestures. Unless you know a keyboard shortcut exists or you expect it should exist, your only hope to learn them is if someone shows you.

The keyboard shortcut is shown after the action in the pull down menu. Actually, old timers (like me) should gravitate toward the keyboard shortcuts since that used to be almost the only option, because

...when I was young we didn't have any fancypants 'ribbon' or 'pull-down menu' .....

I remember when Word used to use Control-L for left align, Control-B for bold, Control-C for center, Control-U for underline, etc, etc.  Then someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.

LeRainDrop

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14525 on: August 20, 2016, 08:33:53 PM »
I remember when Word used to use Control-L for left align, Control-B for bold, Control-C for center, Control-U for underline, etc, etc.  Then someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.

Hmmm, are you pulling our legs?  All of those still work that way except that Control-C is for copy (and Control-V for paste).

markstache

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14526 on: August 20, 2016, 09:46:08 PM »
I'm more worried about bed bugs lurking in the book covers. It only takes 5 seconds per book to look, and potentially saves you months of headaches.

Not that it's ever happened to me, but you know what they say about prevention...

I hate to validate quasi-phobias, but our library was recently closed for two days because of a bed-bug scare. They used bug sniffing dogs (yes, you read that right) to narrow down the problem to one wooden basket, which was destroyed.

Apparently, beg bugs are an issue for libraries nation wide (USA). Makes me glad to use the Paperwhite Kindle (highly recommended!) more and more (with library e-books).

lbdance

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14527 on: August 20, 2016, 11:59:39 PM »
I remember when Word used to use Control-L for left align, Control-B for bold, Control-C for center, Control-U for underline, etc, etc.  Then someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.

Hmmm, are you pulling our legs?  All of those still work that way except that Control-C is for copy (and Control-V for paste).

Control - E for centre now by the way

My brother writes reports for a living. He told me earlier in the week that he only just recently learned that CTRL+F allowed one to search for text. I don't blame people who don't know these things; the OS makers really have a fun time at introducing unintuitive keyboard shortcuts and gestures. Unless you know a keyboard shortcut exists or you expect it should exist, your only hope to learn them is if someone shows you.

As in Ctrl + F for FIND?

There are courses that people can attend, and as a manager I often give my staff the opportunity to attend basic Office Training to assist with their efficiency and understanding.

Playing with Fire UK

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14528 on: August 21, 2016, 12:04:43 AM »
  Our condo building manager sends me Word doc reports where at the end of each line, she presses enter and then tabs in for the next line, so if you need to make any edits, then you have to re-do the f-ed up formatting. 

You may know this but not everyone knows this:
Use Ctrl + H to open Find/Replace. In the find box put ^p^t, in the replace box put one space.

LeRainDrop

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14529 on: August 21, 2016, 12:40:51 AM »
  Our condo building manager sends me Word doc reports where at the end of each line, she presses enter and then tabs in for the next line, so if you need to make any edits, then you have to re-do the f-ed up formatting. 

You may know this but not everyone knows this:
Use Ctrl + H to open Find/Replace. In the find box put ^p^t, in the replace box put one space.

Oh, cool, a new trick, and it works!  I forgot, but she also has a habit of putting lots of spaces until she gets to the next line.  I don't even understand how it's possible to make such screwed up formatting!

A couple weeks ago, I emailed a pdf to her to post to our website.  She insisted she couldn't post it because our printer/scanner "wasn't working."  Huh?  Yeah, because her method of posting a file to our website apparently had been to print it out, scan it in, and then upload it from the scan folder.  And that was the only way she knew how to do it.

former player

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14530 on: August 21, 2016, 12:49:49 AM »
I remember when Word used to use Control-L for left align, Control-B for bold, Control-C for center, Control-U for underline, etc, etc.  Then someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.
I remember when there was a program call WordPerfect which was infinitely better than Word for formatting long and complicated documents and someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.

#stillbitterafteralltheseyears

dragoncar

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14531 on: August 21, 2016, 03:00:50 AM »
  Our condo building manager sends me Word doc reports where at the end of each line, she presses enter and then tabs in for the next line, so if you need to make any edits, then you have to re-do the f-ed up formatting. 

You may know this but not everyone knows this:
Use Ctrl + H to open Find/Replace. In the find box put ^p^t, in the replace box put one space.

Oh, cool, a new trick, and it works!  I forgot, but she also has a habit of putting lots of spaces until she gets to the next line.  I don't even understand how it's possible to make such screwed up formatting!

A couple weeks ago, I emailed a pdf to her to post to our website.  She insisted she couldn't post it because our printer/scanner "wasn't working."  Huh?  Yeah, because her method of posting a file to our website apparently had been to print it out, scan it in, and then upload it from the scan folder.  And that was the only way she knew how to do it.

I'd probably write a macro to fix her broken files.  There are codes to, say, find more than 10 spaces and place a carriage return.  Something like find " {10:1000}" replace "^p" but I don't really know off the top of my head.  Reduce multiple spaces to double space by running find " {2:1000}" replace "  ", and so on.  String enough of these together and it'll fix most of the problems until she comes up with new ways to be funky.


arebelspy

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14532 on: August 21, 2016, 03:39:03 AM »
  Our condo building manager sends me Word doc reports where at the end of each line, she presses enter and then tabs in for the next line, so if you need to make any edits, then you have to re-do the f-ed up formatting. 

You may know this but not everyone knows this:
Use Ctrl + H to open Find/Replace. In the find box put ^p^t, in the replace box put one space.

Oh, cool, a new trick, and it works!  I forgot, but she also has a habit of putting lots of spaces until she gets to the next line.  I don't even understand how it's possible to make such screwed up formatting!

A couple weeks ago, I emailed a pdf to her to post to our website.  She insisted she couldn't post it because our printer/scanner "wasn't working."  Huh?  Yeah, because her method of posting a file to our website apparently had been to print it out, scan it in, and then upload it from the scan folder.  And that was the only way she knew how to do it.

I'd probably write a macro to fix her broken files.  There are codes to, say, find more than 10 spaces and place a carriage return.  Something like find " {10:1000}" replace "^p" but I don't really know off the top of my head.  Reduce multiple spaces to double space by running find " {2:1000}" replace "  ", and so on.  String enough of these together and it'll fix most of the problems until she comes up with new ways to be funky.

Even without the macro idea, here's a simple way to do it: find/replace, put in, say 10 spaces in the find, two spaces in the top.  Find/replace all.  Run a few times to get all ones > 10.  Then change the find to 5 spaces, run a few more times (so in this example, 8 spaces would get missed in the 10 run, then first 5 run it'd detect the first 5 of the 8 spaces, change it to 2, then have 3, so then the second 5 run it'd change the 3+2 to just 2).  Then change it to 3, click replace all a few times.. now all multiple spaces are two at most.

No macro needed, just clicking "replace all" a couple extra times until it says "none found" when you click it.
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Paul der Krake

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14533 on: August 21, 2016, 03:45:29 AM »
It's not done until I see some unit tests, dammit!

esq

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14534 on: August 21, 2016, 08:02:26 AM »
I remember when Word used to use Control-L for left align, Control-B for bold, Control-C for center, Control-U for underline, etc, etc.  Then someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.

Hmmm, are you pulling our legs?  All of those still work that way except that Control-C is for copy (and Control-V for paste).

I guess I'm not typing in Word as much as I thought.  But because L, R and C no longer work for formatting, I guess I gave it all up.  I feel weird now.  Thanks, LeRainDrop!  :D (Love your name, btw.)

Tjat

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14535 on: August 21, 2016, 08:21:17 AM »
Alignment in any direction is literally one mouse click. Change doesn't necessarily mean "someone in Redmond" is out to make your life difficult. Worst case you can custom add shortcuts with the Ctrl shift combination.

esq

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14536 on: August 21, 2016, 08:29:02 AM »
Alignment in any direction is literally one mouse click. Change doesn't necessarily mean "someone in Redmond" is out to make your life difficult. Worst case you can custom add shortcuts with the Ctrl shift combination.

Merely a stab at paranoia humor. :D

And apropo to nothing, Control-B does not work here.


LennStar

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14537 on: August 21, 2016, 08:56:02 AM »
In my job I often dealt with the converse of this - someone wants a report or spreadsheet that summarizes a lot of information from various sources, and they want it on short notice. "Oh, by the way, I am giving a presentation to Group X, could you pull together an overview summary of Y?" 

I was so sick of this at the end, I actually said "do you know how long that will take?"
Them: "Oh, can't you just run a report?"
Me: "No, information a is in database a, information b us in database b which is not connected to a, etc. and I have to redact irrelevant records and reformat the output and add information that is not in any of the databases"
Them: "Oh" <blank stare>

These are all databases the fuckers were supposed to be using themselves, and information they were supposed to know, and they all had administrative assistants to run auto reports from the software they were supposed to know how to use anyway.

If it was 'just running a report' they should have known how to do it themselves, and even if they didn't, their admins knew how to run it. Glad I am out of there!
Ahaha.
I once was in a similar situation. But I was able to "automate" lots of it, so instead of my already fast 2 hours it took me only 40 (+/-15) after that.
Of course I would still take my good 2 hours and spend the rest time surfing. After all they didnt even pay me.
I did leave the automate excel sheet and a guideline there when my time was over, but I guess it was never used.

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14538 on: August 21, 2016, 09:18:32 AM »
Recently someone said to me "I was going to retire this year, but then I bought a new car so now
I've got to work two more years." And then, went on to talk about her love of shiney things on cars.

Its not even a cool car, just a consumer mobile. Now, if someone was buying a classic Jaguar S car and wanted to sock away repair money for its lifetime, and needed to work for 2 more years to do that hey, I could relate! Haha. But not for some dumb uninteresting auto just off the assembly line.

esq

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14539 on: August 21, 2016, 09:19:11 AM »
I remember when Word used to use Control-L for left align, Control-B for bold, Control-C for center, Control-U for underline, etc, etc.  Then someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.
I remember when there was a program call WordPerfect which was infinitely better than Word for formatting long and complicated documents and someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.

#stillbitterafteralltheseyears

LOL, back in the days when I did use word processing on a daily basis, I hated WordPerfect because the formatting used numbers (very unintuitive) and, you had to block the entire paragraph in order for a paragraph format to work, i.e., to center, you blocked the entire paragraph, then hit Control-3.  In MSWord, you could put the cursor anywhere in the paragraph, hit Control-C, and done.  So there.

Just don't ask me what I had for dinner last night.

iris lily

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14540 on: August 21, 2016, 09:21:03 AM »
I remember when Word used to use Control-L for left align, Control-B for bold, Control-C for center, Control-U for underline, etc, etc.  Then someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.
I remember when there was a program call WordPerfect which was infinitely better than Word for formatting long and complicated documents and someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.

#stillbitterafteralltheseyears

LOL, back in the days when I did use word processing on a daily basis, I hated WordPerfect because the formatting used numbers (very unintuitive) and, you had to block the entire paragraph in order for a paragraph format to work, i.e., to center, you blocked the entire paragraph, then hit Control-3.  In MSWord, you could put the cursor anywhere in the paragraph, hit Control-C, and done.  So there.

Just don't ask me what I had for dinner last night.
I still mourn the "reveal codes" command on Wordperfect.

Metric Mouse

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14541 on: August 21, 2016, 09:43:41 AM »
I remember when Word used to use Control-L for left align, Control-B for bold, Control-C for center, Control-U for underline, etc, etc.  Then someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.
I remember when there was a program call WordPerfect which was infinitely better than Word for formatting long and complicated documents and someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.

#stillbitterafteralltheseyears

LOL, back in the days when I did use word processing on a daily basis, I hated WordPerfect because the formatting used numbers (very unintuitive) and, you had to block the entire paragraph in order for a paragraph format to work, i.e., to center, you blocked the entire paragraph, then hit Control-3.  In MSWord, you could put the cursor anywhere in the paragraph, hit Control-C, and done.  So there.

Just don't ask me what I had for dinner last night.

*snort*

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14542 on: August 21, 2016, 09:59:12 AM »
*snip*

And apropo to nothing, Control-B does not work here.

Sorry to be pedantic, but "apropos" is spelled with a silent "s."

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14543 on: August 21, 2016, 10:09:44 AM »
So while I get the frustration and accept the jokes, I'm also putting myself into the category of people who have pretty much given up on new technology when it comes to social media platforms.  There is so much to keep up with and it rarely benefits me. 

Oh I get THIS! Yes - I am totally inept with social media. Not motivated to learn it at all and my job doesn't require it.

The frustrations I mentioned are people who don't know how to use a Win7 program menu to find MS Office. Or don't know that Chrome or Firefox are alternatives to the big blue "E". Or how to know what program they are currently using. I understand the problems that Win10 poses to new converts but at work we've been using Win7 for a decade now and it isn't that different from WinXP. ;)

Job security for me. Seriously - if these people spend a big portion of each day using a computer, why can't they learn a few skills about it? Basic stuff.

Papa Mustache

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14544 on: August 21, 2016, 10:12:31 AM »
I remember when Word used to use Control-L for left align, Control-B for bold, Control-C for center, Control-U for underline, etc, etc.  Then someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.
I remember when there was a program call WordPerfect which was infinitely better than Word for formatting long and complicated documents and someone in Redmond decided one fine day all that silly intuitive stuff should go away.

#stillbitterafteralltheseyears

Corel WordPerfect still exists! Nice software too in my opinion. Corel has kept updating it all these years.

nobodyspecial

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14545 on: August 21, 2016, 11:25:32 AM »
*snip*

And apropo to nothing, Control-B does not work here.

Sorry to be pedantic, but "apropos" is spelled with a silent "s."
It used to be, but these days in order to reduce energy consumption and combat global warming we are dropping silent letters.
The campaign is being led by Al Gor
« Last Edit: August 21, 2016, 11:27:48 AM by nobodyspecial »

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14546 on: August 21, 2016, 11:48:19 AM »
*snip*

And apropo to nothing, Control-B does not work here.

Sorry to be pedantic, but "apropos" is spelled with a silent "s."
It used to be, but these days in order to reduce energy consumption and combat global warming we are dropping silent letters.
The campaign is being led by Al Gor

I see!  Thank you for your anser.  Nowing that, now I feel dum.

esq

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14547 on: August 21, 2016, 12:00:46 PM »
*snip*

And apropo to nothing, Control-B does not work here.

Sorry to be pedantic, but "apropos" is spelled with a silent "s."
It used to be, but these days in order to reduce energy consumption and combat global warming we are dropping silent letters.
The campaign is being led by Al Gor

I see!  Thank you for your anser.  Nowing that, now I feel dum.

Ha!  I was thinking, "what is she talking about, of course I included the silent 's', of course, because I always do, because I'm terribly fond of beginning random thoughts (or in this case, not so random, I was joking) with 'apropos to nothing' ".

And then I looked.  And I was momentarily  horrified.  But now I'm laughing. 

And a bunch of Houston MMM'ers are about to meet each other for the first time, so it's all good.

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14548 on: August 21, 2016, 01:30:48 PM »
  Our condo building manager sends me Word doc reports where at the end of each line, she presses enter and then tabs in for the next line, so if you need to make any edits, then you have to re-do the f-ed up formatting. 

You may know this but not everyone knows this:
Use Ctrl + H to open Find/Replace. In the find box put ^p^t, in the replace box put one space.

Oh, cool, a new trick, and it works!  I forgot, but she also has a habit of putting lots of spaces until she gets to the next line.  I don't even understand how it's possible to make such screwed up formatting!

A couple weeks ago, I emailed a pdf to her to post to our website.  She insisted she couldn't post it because our printer/scanner "wasn't working."  Huh?  Yeah, because her method of posting a file to our website apparently had been to print it out, scan it in, and then upload it from the scan folder.  And that was the only way she knew how to do it.

I'd probably write a macro to fix her broken files.  There are codes to, say, find more than 10 spaces and place a carriage return.  Something like find " {10:1000}" replace "^p" but I don't really know off the top of my head.  Reduce multiple spaces to double space by running find " {2:1000}" replace "  ", and so on.  String enough of these together and it'll fix most of the problems until she comes up with new ways to be funky.

Even without the macro idea, here's a simple way to do it: find/replace, put in, say 10 spaces in the find, two spaces in the top.  Find/replace all.  Run a few times to get all ones > 10.  Then change the find to 5 spaces, run a few more times (so in this example, 8 spaces would get missed in the 10 run, then first 5 run it'd detect the first 5 of the 8 spaces, change it to 2, then have 3, so then the second 5 run it'd change the 3+2 to just 2).  Then change it to 3, click replace all a few times.. now all multiple spaces are two at most.

No macro needed, just clicking "replace all" a couple extra times until it says "none found" when you click it.

OK I looked up the actual code.  If you turn on "wildcards" you can use the X{Y,Z} expression to find anwhere between Y-Z of X.  So you if you:

find: <space character>{2,1000}
replace <space character>

then click replace all, you will immediately replace all multiples of 2-1000 spaces with a single space if that's your goal

I sometimes use what you suggest to make sure I don't have any triple spaces in my documents. 

johnny847

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Re: Overheard at Work
« Reply #14549 on: August 21, 2016, 03:01:06 PM »
CW: Something is wrong, I can't do (Thing) for this customer.
Me:  (pulls account up, and the standard notification screen that comes up when the customer has amounts owing pops up)
Me: Press the button labelled (Thing) to get past this screen.
CW: Oh.  You know, I'd really like more training on this.  Are there instructions for it?
Me: ...

It's ONE BUTTON.  Labelled as the next step that you want to do.  Do you really need instructions to remember it's there?!  And there are only a couple of buttons to choose from on that screen anyway!  It is not a complicated interface!

The really sad thing is, this is not the first time she's asked me that question and I've shown her that button.  But instructions wouldn't help, they'd just confuse her more, because this step obviously isn't necessary every time, and she doesn't handle "if/then" steps very well.  The real problem is that she doesn't actually understand what's going on and why that screen exists.  I've explained what's happening, because if she *understood* it she wouldn't need help, but it just. does. not. compute.

(I don't think she's actually listening - I think she stops paying much attention as soon as you start explaining or showing her something, because she automatically dismisses it as a computer thing she can't be expected to understand.  I don't think she's naturally this incapable, but I don't see a way to get past her shield against learning something, especially since she isn't consciously aware she's doing it.)

A while ago on I believe this thread someone said some people just expect to follow a recipe when doing anything on a computer. Whenever some exception happens, instead of trying to understand what's actually happening, they just throw their hands up and say oh well the instructions don't explain this...

I don't know how these people expect to get anywhere in life.