Mind Reading 101

[Hawkmoon]

I have found that you can learn a lot about people by getting your grubby mitts on a document they have created in Microsoft Word. Preferably a moderately long document with a bit of formatting. I'm looking at such a document right now. It's a list of names, addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses for members of my high school class. It was compiled by a classmate, who sort of unilaterally appointed himself as the class secretary, since the girl who was class secretary when we were in school has long since moved out of state and isn't interested.

What a DISASTER! If I click the little reversed 'P' paragraph icon to display formatting codes, I can see what a bollix he has created. NOTHING is consistent throughout. In the middle of the document (sometimes in the middle of one person's listing) he changes margins, changes tab settings, uses spaces instead of tabs, puts multiple word spaces and/or tabs on blank lines, or after the last typed character in lines ...

Why do I find this interesting? Because prior to his retirement, this guy was fairly high up in the state's Public Public Works Department. My sate is functionally bankrupt. This is part of the reason. If other people working for the state are as disorganized and undisciplined in their thought processes as this guy ... we're doomed.

Trying to render some order out of the chaos he created is extremely frustrating. And that doesn't even address the fact that this is a standard address list. He put it together with straight text, in Word -- he didn't use a table, he didn't use columns. He didn't create it in Excel or (even better) Access. My guess is that he probably expected "staff" to be fluent with Excel and Access, but he never bothered to learn either. So, since when the only tool you have is a hammer the whole world is a nail ... he used Word.

I wish I could say "unbelievable," but I can't. It's all too believable.

[just Warren]

I'm the Head Non-Skating Official (HNSO) for the local woman's roller derby league and for a recent bout I needed scorers (amongst other positions) to keep track of the points each team earned.

I had asked that people interested in volunteering for any of these positions watch how-to videos I linked from Youtube. This didn't happen.

So one of my assistants explained the form to both scorers and how to fill it out.

Well, one person not only failed to fill out the form properly they totally missed adding in some points. So that at the end of the bout we had the wrong score. We didn't know it until later in the week when I had time to go through all the paperwork from the match.

Because the person was so sloppy in filling out the form it was impossible to know just how many points had actually been scored. The team that was credited with the win still won but by at least 10 more points than they thought they did. Which made their literal and very exciting last jam comeback with only seconds to go in the bout a moot exercise.

So because the score was changed, I had to go though several hours of using an online document signing (Docusign sucks!) service to get the head referee and the two team captains and myself to all sign an updated document.

Puzzling over that paperwork and then having to to deal with the extra activities wasted an entire night for me. I was not happy.  It took hours of Facebook messaging and because Docusign sucks it had to be done twice, finally working when I went to another service.

I was willing to be forgiving about it though as I figured maybe this person is not good with paperwork and they were overwhelmed.

Cut to a week later when I see the person has posted a "man, am I busy or what" photo of themselves working.

And so what's the job this person does? Patient charting for a local hospital.   

[MechAg94]

Makes me wonder if the person inherited the document or updated it over time and just brute forced the formating anywhere it was off.  I have done that before, but it is easier to make it all the same.  

Maybe it is because I am an engineer.  I default to Excel for lists and tables.  I like Excel.  The formating is pretty simple and lists and simple tables are easy to set up.  IMO, Access is way more than 99% of people need.  I never learned to use Access to any great extent so that means I don't like it.   

[Brad Johnson]

Being part of a University I see it from all sides. Most here are decently okay with everyday things but there is a distinct subset of users who, for whatever reason, appear to use the hardest possible method to do anything when it comes to office documents. Some, like Hawk's experience, are those who seem to have no idea how the whole process works and just keep punching buttons until it's close enough for them. Others are consummate conversion artists, insisting that no matter what the source document it must be converted to their format of choice. Sometimes they will even convert documents you sent them for a quick review.

It could also be simple inexperience combined with no desire to progress beyond the most basic of basic use. Dad has been using computers for the better part of 30 years but still struggles with producing a simple document, mostly because he's stuck in the typewriter era and just can't seem to wrap his brain around the computer automatically handling formatting, spacing, and general appearance issues. His MO is to do everything using only the space bar, shift key, and enter (RETURN to him). Anything beyond that and he'll have me do it. What we consider the simple everyday tasks, things like highlighting, copy and paste, and font adjustments, might as well not even exist on his machine as they've never been used. Also, at 78 he doesn't care to learn anything beyond what he knows because he uses it so seldom and has me and my nephews available for help. (Thank You ... again ... to the inventor of TeamViewer. You've no idea how many phones you save me from bouncing off the nearest wall in frustration.)

Brad

[Hawkmoon]

Brad, your father sounds like my late uncle. Many years ago he sent me a spreadsheet of a bunch of numbers pertaining to a family estate that we both had an interest in. I looked at it, and I could quickly see that some of the totals looked wrong, as did a few other things. So I went to those cells to check his formulas (formulae?) and found that -- lo and behold -- there were no formulas. There were ... numbers.

Yes, to my uncle Excel was like an electronic ledger page. It provided neat columns for entering your numbers, then you fired up the adding machine to run the totals and you typed them in. I fixed it up to perform calculations automatically where called for and sent it back to him. His comment was something like, "What a novel idea!"

[230RN]

Like your Dad, Brad Johnson, 79 yo.

Over many, many years* I go so sick and tired of changing and upgrading software that now I store every thing verbal in Notepad *.txt files and use its "Find" function to get to what I want.

Dumb.

Stupid.

Quasi-"eternal."

When I was working, I was UTD on everything, but there was still an instance where a form I developed in WordPerfect years before needed some revision.  (We were getting it printed off a master printed copy at the commercial printer's over the years.)

Lo!  Behold !  WordPerfect (AKA "WordSortaOK") was no longer available in the company's repertoire of software.  MS-Word did not handle some of the formatting right, and I had to spend quite some time to develop a workaround.

Curses.  And this happened with many things. Drat.

So when I retired, I converted most of my home documents into Notepad.

Dumb.

Simple.

Quasi-"eternal."

You want pretty pink bows around the first letter in every paragraph?  Fine.  Put 'em in yourself.

Terry, 230RN

* I cut my teeth on an IBM 1620, Hollerith cards, 8 X 3 filenames, and Fortran.