The Daily Cow-orker 23/11/2004 chronicles the actual ejection of The Cow-orker from the office. And the data droppings she leaves behind.
23rd November, 2004.
The Cow-orker may have moved out our office, but like landmines in third world nations, she's the gift that just keeps on giving...
We've been preparing next year's budget, as was the Cow-orker before we finally pushed her out the door in a scene that went something like this:
- HEAVE! -
"But wait, there's more! I haven't told you everything yet!"
- HEAVE! -
"We'll call if we need you"
"They haven't got an office ready for me yet!"
- HEAVE! -
"Mind the door on the way out!"
"But -!"
- SLAM -
And there was much rejoicing.
But back to the budget.
The budget spreadsheet is a hideous affair with many, many line items. Â Our manager places a copy of the spreadsheet in a shared area and asks us each to fill in the lines we're responsible for, so that when we're done the result can be merged back into the original file.
Skip forward two days. The Cow-orker is now a distant bellow on another floor (and random phone calls throughout the day and flying visits to see if everything's collapsed in her absence yet) and my manager asks me how the budget is going. When I go to open the file he notices something odd.
"Why are there two copies? The file was shared so that you could both work on a single copy, and we could merge it back into the master document when you were done!"
"Because, well ... see for yourself."Â I open the first file.
He looks at "my" copy. My information is there, his information is there ... but there's nothing from the Cow-orker. He starts to ask where the Cow-orker's information is when I open up "her" file.
It contains her information, and nothing else. Every single other line-item has been deleted, she's rearranged and reformatted the document, and renamed the file with her trademarked misleading and non-descriptive naming convention. She's also successfully ensured that merging this document with the master won't work and that the only way to get this information back into the master file will be through manually copying and pasting it cell by cell.
He flinches. "Why would she do that? Deleting everything else makes no sense at all when we're trying to put together the budget for the whole department. Why?"
Because sometimes it's hard to find the right words to say "good-bye", perhaps?
The Compleat Cow-Orker. I wish there were a way to send the author a beer.
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