Excel program on an office computer

"Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot" - D11

By jasonmcgathey | Jason McGathey | 29 Sep 2023


Excel program on an office computer A magical program, but not THAT magical.

 

Their de facto leader who becomes the actual leader, with the latest devastating news. Upon reflection, so much more is making sense now. One morning everyone arrives to Karen Hatley’s mass email in their inbox, announcing that Duane has suffered a heart attack. He’s doing okay, but has decided to take at least the next month off to recuperate, possibly longer.

In the meantime, the rest of them continue either treading water, or struggling just to hold their noses ever so slightly above it. To replace the departed controller, Carmen, the Bellwether brass hires finds a stopgap fix from a temp agency, Andy, who is an affable, doughy, middle-aged guy but most crucially does seem to know what he’s doing. Regarding Teri’s vacancy, they find a more permanent solution in the form of this kid named Jack, who is a proper well-rounded tech geek that if nothing else — and maybe this is the result of watching so many tech related TV shows and movies of late, a saturation of geek culture — it feels as though the entire conjoined company has now gotten a little more modern, just by having this kid around.

But there are tradeoffs, sure. One of these, although it was only a useful coincidence that Teri knew a little about both, is that Jack doesn’t have any sort of accounting background. He doesn’t know Excel and he definitely doesn’t know any of the tunes this obscure discordant Orchestra might play. Again, though, this is totally normal to have these functions in discreet silos, they had only gotten lucky that it was otherwise with Teri. These points are immediately pressed into play, too, during the latest page turning chapters of this hilarious saga.

Edgar isn’t sure if you would say this is to Corey’s credit, necessarily, but it’s true that due to having more responsibility now, he has been perpetuating a lot less wackiness. It’s akin to the paradox encountered every holiday season, in that people are too busy for generating random nonsense. And on another similar note, though positively NOT to anyone’s credit, when you begin to recognize the same type of errors stemming from the same people, this acts as, however accidentally, a leveling agent, making these waters a little less choppy than they would be otherwise. He already knows that Pat is going to come up with more missing invoices than all the other contributors combined. Therefore, when Universal Foods emails their weekly roundup of late ones, this is immediately the first place that Edgar looks. The same concept applies to Sam at Liberty, who cannot seem to remember to code a slew of items to meat, is constantly charging them to grocery — Edgar automatically gives anything coming in with this guy’s signature an extra degree of scrutiny.

But there are the known, expected personal foibles…and there are those who still don’t quite comprehend the job they are supposed to be doing. Or make that one person, one known person. Edgar hasn’t complained about Pierre to anyone (for a triad of roughly equal reasons: this isn’t his style; he doesn’t have time; he admittedly thinks it’s kind of funny that this ridiculous appointee would fail in such epic fashion) and he has tried his best to help the guy as much as possible, because company concerns trump everything else. This dude has been on the job for eleven months, though, when his latest perplexing phone call comes through, and it numbs Edgar’s own brain to try and picture how Pierre could still not get this simple point.

Pierre recently went into the system to switch over the preferred vendor on a bunch of items from Universal Foods to Harmony Hill (did so by laboriously typing in the information in Orchestra itself, of course, though this is beside the point), and printed out the tags. Yet is thoroughly confused because he thought that by doing so, it would somehow magically change the retail to what Harmony Hill’s last Excel file has listed as their SRP. The Excel file which was downloaded to Pierre’s desktop computer but went no further.

If he had at least bothered to upload the thing into Orchestra in some fashion, Edgar can see where you might think that this would somehow keep the Harmony Hill prices parked in some kind of background holding pattern, rising to the forefront only when deployed. But Pierre hadn’t even done that. And never mind that this SRP nonsense isn’t even what Healthy Shopper Market is supposed to be using anyway. That’s rather moot when you consider that the person you have in charge of this stuff thinks that leaving an Excel file sitting idly on one computer will somehow transform pricing in the POS system parked in a server on a completely different computer.

This is your boy, Corey, is all Edgar can think about the latest kerfuffle. Your cherry-picked all-star, nearly a year into the job. How can he still be this clueless? And there’s another whole dimension to this, too, the more Edgar considers it, in that Pierre wouldn’t notice, care, or take issue with the pricing himself — no, somebody else brought this to his attention. That he obviously gave that person or persons an earful about his process, and they too are under the impression that this should have worked.

Well, as a consideration Edgar’s rallied around for eons, you can only dodge reality for so long. As such the next wrinkle, however comical the execution, always had a completely inevitable outcome. A few days later Edgar’s sitting at his desk, absently tuning out the background noise as he hammers away on his latest bundle of invoices. Therefore isn’t paying attention to and misses the beginning of this conversation. But eventually becomes aware of Jack, unseen but clearly audible the next row over, talking to someone on the phone.

“Umm…okay…,” he says, chuckling, “maybe…why, what’s going on?…mmmmmm…mmm hmm…well, alright, I don’t know, I can give it a shot…yeah, just send it over to me and I’ll see what I can do…”

Jack’s utterance of the word Orchestra is what initially drew Edgar’s attention to the discussion. Across a subsequent series of phone calls, too, running in both directions, during which Edgar thinks, no way…surely this is not what I think it is gradually transforming into, oh my god, this is EXACTLY what I thought it was! Because it sure sounds like someone, most likely Corey, has just contacted the IT guy about uploading a price change file for Harmony Hill.

“Hey, what’s the vendor number for this file?” is one such phone call he hears Jack making, “it’s telling me I need to know the vendor number.”

Not having that information directly at his disposal, Corey evidently tells Jack he’ll call him back with it. One reason that the Orchestra system asks for a number instead of a vendor name is that it cuts down on potential abbreviation/misspelling issues creating a separate vendor for the exact same stuff. For example it’s much easier to remember that they are vendor number 24 rather than wondering whether you spelled it out fully, or used HH, HarmonyHill, HrmnyHl or Harmony, and possibly guessing incorrectly if you don’t look it up every time. This is reassuring, though, to know that such safeguards are in place and working correctly.

If only that were true for every looming quicksand pit. A short while later, Edgar can hear Jack asking, “hey, what about the department number? It says I need a department number?…Oh two? Like zero two, you mean?…okay, cool,” and hanging up again.

It’s only maybe another half hour before all manner of hell breaks loose. Jack, who has been with the company for not even a month and, in case anyone forgot, is a member of the IT Department, would have no way of knowing that their department code for accounting purposes is 10002, not 02. It’s certainly debatable why a program like this would throw up a roadblock over vendor numbers, yet allow nonexistent department numbers to sail through unimpeded, but…that’s exactly what has happened here.

Edgar actually didn’t even know this was possible. A brand-new series of panicked phone calls breaks out over there, however, confirming that this is not only the case, but that it has wreaked some truly gruesome results. For whatever reason, Liberty Avenue was the site in most urgent need of these updates. So Jack uploaded the Harmony Hill file, and manually synced with that store alone. Which is a blessing in that not only is the department code wrong, and this 02 entity is collecting no taxes, but Jack had no way of knowing he was supposed to rearrange some of the columns into a correct order. About half were accidentally in the right place, a couple forcibly made so when the system asked for such, with a few others horribly, horribly wrong. The most egregious example of which is that the cost field went where the retail should have been.

The disasters continue to stockpile from here. Though the nonexistent department code didn’t throw up a Red Screen Of Death, following Liberty’s sync with the main server, it has disconnected itself from communication. Therefore Jack is unable to send a corrected file over to there. This is the point at which, grunting this through what one has to imagine are some seriously gnashed together teeth, Corey apparently makes the recommendation that should have been his first move.

“Edgar?…uh…yeah, I think so,” he hears Jack say, “okay, I’ll go ask him.”

Followed by the sound of a desk phone hanging up, and then Jack appearing at his side roughly five seconds later, grinning at him in the manner of someone who’s unsure how the request for a really big favor might go over.

“Edgar? You’re Edgar, right?” he says.

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jasonmcgathey
jasonmcgathey

I am a professional writer with 8 published books under my belt. And many other unpublished ones, in various stages of disarray.


Jason McGathey
Jason McGathey

Semi-Coherent Musings - from one of the leading masters of this questionable art form!

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