well, just hell

don't you hate it when you make a mistake? and your boss catches it? after you've sent the report?

the big boss had me do a consolidation of six reports into two last week. it was in excel, which is my least favorite program in the universe, and i needed to put everything together, then sort it, which isn't a task i've done very often.

i laboriously did it, fighting to make everything the same so it would sort correctly. i mean, what were these people doing? some of the information was in caps, some of it was missing descriptions, some of it was in inverse order -- those slackers! and it all needed to be the same so it would sort correctly and i had to take the time to redo everything. but, finally i had it all finished.

i read the initial e-mail one more time to make sure i didn't miss anything, and figured out there was another 'type' which needed to be sorted. it hadn't been apparent on first read, so i quickly ran down a different report to get the appropriate data, which took awhile.

FINALLY. i had everything finished, i had checked and rechecked to make sure no one was left out, and i sent the report on its way.

the next day the big boss came in saying something wasn't right with the report. i looked at her with shock and trepidation -- how could that be? i looked at her computer and she showed me what she was talking about.

that damn excel program! each of the six files had tabs at the bottom of the worksheet and i hadn't even noticed them! so each of the files opened in either one or the other tab and that accounted for the discrepancies. dammit! dammit! how had i missed that?

she asked if i had checked to make sure i hadn't left anyone out, and i said i had double- and triple-checked and if it turned out i had missed someone i was going to tender my resignation right then.

so she had me call the gal in the central office to see if the gal needed me to redo the report with any other data. as i talked with her it turned out she not only didn't need the report redone with more data, it was pretty obvious she could have gotten along without having the report done in the first place. kinda irritating, since it took me a lot of time over a couple of days with putting off other of my work to get this frivolous report done.

regardless, i really hated missing those tabs. especially since the big boss saw it. damned excel. damned, damned excel. mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble, mumble...