Workin’ 3 to 3:30

12/8/05


At the risk of sounding like a Dilbert cartoon, I have quick note here about an infuriating incident that happened to me at work today. Just for background, here’s what I do to keep from living in my car:

I’ve worked at, oh, let’s call it, TripleXtravel.com, for four years and am beginning, (just beginning, mind you, I’m still young,) to question just where the hell I derailed in life, sending this runaway locomotive of existence barreling into dead-end, intellectually devoid employment just tumbling and spewing wreckage as it slides down the canyon and eventually bursts into flames.

My actual work is, as I may have mentioned before, glorified data entry. The nice part about it is that I get paid a wage several dollars above the poverty line, have decent benefits, stock options and management leaves me to my own devices. Also, I don’t have to deal with customers. I just sit there in my half-cubicle, (the walls are, curiously, only about three feet tall, I assume to make us feel less like trapped rats and bolster our “team” environment but in reality just means you look at a sea of bad haircuts all day long,) surfing the internet and emailing the few coworkers I don’t find completely brain dead, listening to audio books and internet radio and sometimes, accidentally, doing a little work. The nicest thing about this job is that the amount of work I get done is impossible to quantify; i.e. my boss is so unaware of just how little work I do that she actually awarded me Employee of the Month for complete with an extra day of vacation and a fifty dollar gift card. Considering the amount I get completed has trailed off at a rate of about 5% for the past six months, I could conceivably get a not only an insanely undeserved, (which won’t stop me from being pissed if I don’t get it,) raise on my next scheduled “evaluation,” (I desperately hate these things, but that’s another blog,) for doing as much as 40% less work.

But to the point at hand. Since I’ve worked at the company there has been a folder on the company intranet where the IT department puts reports emailed to us every week in the form of Excel spreadsheets. I constantly reference these reports as the information they contain is necessary in the one facet of my job in which I am held accountable. Recently it has been decided, I can only assume under the influence of some demonic imp or ifrit, that that system is just too cumbersome.

Starting this week the reports have been emailed to me directly; but wait, my story gets better. Instead of one single report as before they are now broken up into anywhere from six to ten separate reports which I have to open individually, paste together and then post on the intranet myself. Only the powers that be, in their devious wisdom, have decided the convenience of Excel spreadsheets might lead to my complacency, which, if left unchecked, would culminate in an unacceptable amount of joy in my life. In short, I now have to open the programs with a separate program and copy and paste the info into Excel then spend ten to twenty minutes formatting and saving these reports properly.

And gods forbid should I accidentally delete one of these reports from my email before completing this ridiculously circuitous task that even those afflicted with OCD would balk at, because then I’d have to email…someone…out there in the nexus of cyberspace to request another copy. This is a not insignificant possibility, as I am constantly deleting sent and received emails lest my inbox become choked with the personal correspondence which accounts for 96% of my electronic mail.

So now, what used to take upwards of fifteen seconds to access gobbles up at least a half hour of my time; time which could much better be served by surfing the internet for synonyms for “donkey punch.”

Just inconsiderate is what it is.