From the makers of "wooden table"



  • First post, so I thought I'd start with my version of a time-honored TDWTF classic.

    In my department at work I turn in a timesheet, because I'm not salaried (I'm a student). We don't use punch cards, or badges (even though we all have badges, and use them to get in and out).

    Instead, we download an excel spreadsheet from the company website, and fill it out DIGITALLY. Do we submit it for automatic entry? No, of course not. Do we email it to the HR person? Nope. We PRINT it out and put it in a physical box for someone to manually enter.

    Not so bad, it's probably standard procedure in a lot of places.

    Except the department I work in is the IT department, in charge of the databases, servers, and everything else IT related. It's our job to administer the databases, except apparently, nobody can figure out how to do a simple INSERT query.



  •  Could be worse. For a while, I worked a contract that required me reading an email, downloading a linked timesheet, printing two copies, filling them in, then faxing one to payroll, handing the other off, and then calling in to a phone system to reeenter the hours over DTMF. 

     Any discrepancy resulted in the check being delayed over a month. 

     



  • I had to do similiar. In fact, we had a spreadsheet we filled out with daily hours, it added up the weekly totals, and we emailed it to HR.

     We had to discontinue this process and print out the same document, write on it with pen, and send it to HR. Do NOT fill it out in Excel and let it add stuff up for you. Do NOT email it.

     The story we heard is that some busybody found a government regulation saying online timekeeping systems for government contract must conform to these standards, and decided a spreadsheet counted- Even if it wasn't emailed.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @cdosrun said:

    I had to do similiar. In fact, we had a spreadsheet we filled out with daily hours, it added up the weekly totals, and we emailed it to HR.

     We had to discontinue this process and print out the same document, write on it with pen, and send it to HR. Do NOT fill it out in Excel and let it add stuff up for you. Do NOT email it.

     The story we heard is that some busybody found a government regulation saying online timekeeping systems for government contract must conform to these standards, and decided a spreadsheet counted- Even if it wasn't emailed.

     

     Solution: Find a "handwriting" font, install it in Excel-- done.



  • Be happy you only have 1 timesheet. I have my own corp and am sub-contracting though another company to work at a client as "staff augmentation". Each week I have at least 6 timesheets to fill out.

    1. Personal Corp - Excel spreadsheet, submitted weekly, Sun-Sat, saved electronically
    2. Contracting Corp - Excel spreadsheet, submitted weekly, Th-Wed, via email
    3. Client Corp, Dept - Excel spreadsheet, submitted twice per month, 01-15/16-31, printed/signed/sneakernet
    4. Client Corp, Project(x3) - Word Document, submitted weekly, Sun-Sat, printed/signed/scanned/emailed

    Throw in status reports for each project and one for the contracting company and lets not forget about the monthly invoice. At least I have automated generation of the excel spreadsheets. I input the data into one spreadsheet and some VBA generates the others and saves them off as separate files. The word documents are next.

    I do not want to think about what is happening behind the scenes with all of these.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

     @DaarkWing said:

    Be happy you only have 1 timesheet. I have my own corp and am sub-contracting though another company to work at a client as "staff augmentation". Each week I have at least 6 timesheets to fill out.

    1. Personal Corp - Excel spreadsheet, submitted weekly, Sun-Sat, saved electronically
    2. Contracting Corp - Excel spreadsheet, submitted weekly, Th-Wed, via email
    3. Client Corp, Dept - Excel spreadsheet, submitted twice per month, 01-15/16-31, printed/signed/sneakernet
    4. Client Corp, Project(x3) - Word Document, submitted weekly, Sun-Sat, printed/signed/scanned/emailed

    How many line items read "3 hours - Filling out time sheets"



  •  Well, you almost achieved to make me less sad about my 3 weekly timesheets as a contractor (employer, client, and client's client !)

    [QUOTE]How many line items read "3 hours - Filling out time sheets"  [/QUOTE]QFT.

    How many times have I thought of that during this braindead (or brain-killing ?) task ? Many.



  • Funny, I don't remember a Chris Ryan working here. What's your real name?

     Actually, we do the same thing here (also the IT dept.) for our monthly time sheets. Fill out the spreadshhet on our puters, print them, sign them and put them in our supervisor's In Box. The supe manually goes over each one for accuracy before signing them and sending them on to Personnel.

    At least our weeklies are on-line.



  • @rudraigh said:

     Actually, we do the same thing here (also the IT dept.) for our monthly time sheets. Fill out the spreadshhet on our puters, print them, sign them and put them in our supervisor's In Box. The supe manually goes over each one for accuracy before signing them and sending them on to Personnel.

    At least our weeklies are on-line.

    Why do you have both weekly and monthly timesheets? If someone really needs the data broken down by different time periods, can't they just run a report of some sort?

  • Trolleybus Mechanic

     @cconroy said:

    Why do you have both weekly and monthly timesheets?

    Probably for the same reason I've seen databases with tblDailyData, tblWeeklyData, tblMonthlyData, tblYearlyData, tblYearlyData_FiscalYear.

    I'll let you guess the reason, but here's a hint: none of those tables are synchronyzed.



  • @toshir0 said:

     Well, you almost achieved to make me less sad about my 3 weekly timesheets as a contractor (employer, client, and client's client !)

    [QUOTE]How many line items read "3 hours - Filling out time sheets"  [/QUOTE]QFT.

    How many times have I thought of that during this braindead (or brain-killing ?) task ? Many.

    During the transition period between when my previous employer was acquired by my current employer, and I was an independent contractor prior to being an official employee, I did exactly that (due to excessive documentation requirements)


  • @Lorne Kates said:

    tblDailyData, tblWeeklyData, tblMonthlyData, tblYearlyData, tblYearlyData_FiscalYear.
     

    Wow, that's some naming convention - not just the "tbl" prefix but a "Data" suffix too.  Please tell me the column names all start with "col".


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @upsidedowncreature said:

    Wow, that's some naming convention - not just the "tbl" prefix but a "Data" suffix too.  Please tell me the column names all start with "col".
    And suffixed with the (original - obviously not the current) data-type? Perhaps the databases are prefixed with db as well?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @upsidedowncreature said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    tblDailyData, tblWeeklyData, tblMonthlyData, tblYearlyData, tblYearlyData_FiscalYear.
     

    Wow, that's some naming convention - not just the "tbl" prefix but a "Data" suffix too.  Please tell me the column names all start with "col".

     

     Nope, all the columns start with an abbreviation of the table, just in case you forgot which table you were working with.

    tblWeeklyData has, for example:

     

    twd_id, twd_dt_dayofweek, twd_weeknumber, twd_data


    And yes, datetime columns got repeated for both date and time-- and yes, there were the integer equivs of each datetime column, because apparently DATEPART and DATEDIFF are too hard to figure out.

    Actually, DATEPART would be used, in this context:


    SELECT CAST(DATEPART(day, twd_dt_date) as varchar) + '/' + CAST(DATEPART(month, twd_dt_date) as varchar) + '/' + CAST(DATEPART(year, twd_dt_date) as varchar) as twd_dt_date_string

     

    (Because .ToString("dd/MM/yyyy") is also too hard)


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @upsidedowncreature said:

    Perhaps the databases are prefixed with db as well?
     

    Thankfully not-- but there are production databases that have the _Test suffix, and test databases that don't (but do have an unused _Test on the same server).

    Nothing like having to hunt down the connection string because you don't know which database the app is actually using.



  •  Wow, yea, umm, do you happen to work in the same place I work?  I'm salaried at an hourly rate (meaning, if I take leave w/o pay, I get docked the same rate as if I was earning an hourly rate, but for all other intents and purposes, we are salary).

    We have security cards to get into the building and into our rooms and into the server room.  All of our time off requests are done by downloading a PDF from our intranet site, fill out the information on the PDF, print it out to sign and hand in to our supervisor...who then signs and hands it up the chain to the person responsible for typing it into a computer.  Then, instead of taking that information and (remember we are salary?) calculating how much to pay us each check..we have to manually write with a pen our hours on a pre-printed weekly time-card.  AND, if that's not enough, for billing we have to enter into our billing software what hours we worked, and who we bill to (if not billable, we bill back to our own department).  We then must print a completed week from the billing system which is then compared to our hand-filled in time card before it moves up the chain to the same person that enters our time off requests into a computer.  They then enter the time cards into the computer and blah blah blah..not sure about the rest of the process from there...but eventually, on payday, we get our checks.

     WTF!

    Note:  I work as a programmer for our IT department...for a government entity.... and I did not design or have anything to do with creating this wacky process...

     At least we are moving to a completely revised system soon...



  • My employer provides me with an Amex credit card. Every month I had to fill out an Excel spreadsheet listing all my purchases for the month, with the amounts broken out so that price, sales tax and shipping charges were all listed separately for each item. Then, I had to print it out, sign it, attach a copy of my Amex bill along with copies of all receipts and give it to my boss, who was supposed to verify that I wasn't buying anything I wasn't supposed to, and then sign it and send it off to ..... somewhere.

    Amazingly, they went to a new electronic system 2 years ago that actually works. I just log on, every purchase is listed, I make sure everything looks OK and click on a "submit" button and it is sent to my boss for his approval.  No more spreadsheets, no more printing, no more making copies of receipts.  I still can't figure out how they got this working so perfectly and other things that are a millions times simpler are totally screwed up.

     

    mod: holy font, batman! –dh



  •  @upsidedowncreature said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    tblDailyData, tblWeeklyData, tblMonthlyData, tblYearlyData, tblYearlyData_FiscalYear.
     

    Wow, that's some naming convention - not just the "tbl" prefix but a "Data" suffix too.  Please tell me the column names all start with "col".

    It must have caused some real head scratching when they tried to prefix all the data with the word "row".




  •   mod: holy font, batman! –dh

    WTF?



  • @El_Heffe said:

      mod: holy font, batman! –dh

    WTF?

     

    Your post originally had some wacky font stuff going on, looked very different from the other posts.  Sounds like he fixed it to be more uniform.



  •  Y.



  • @NoOneImportant said:

     Could be worse. For a while, I worked a contract that required me reading an email, downloading a linked timesheet, printing two copies, filling them in, then faxing one to payroll, handing the other off, and then calling in to a phone system to reeenter the hours over DTMF. 

     Any discrepancy resulted in the check being delayed over a month. 

     

     

    Sounds like this was their way of handling their cash flow problems.



  • @locallunatic said:

    @El_Heffe said:

      mod: holy font, batman! –dh

    WTF?

     

    Your post originally had some wacky font stuff going on, looked very different from the other posts.  Sounds like he fixed it to be more uniform.

    Really?  I didn't do anything.  I swear!!  I just typed it in and click on "post".

     

    Edit:   Hmmmm......... that might have been the one where I typed it up in Chrome, but when I previewed it I discovered that Chrome apparently doesn't play nice with the editors here, so I copied the text and pasted it into Firefox.  But still, the preview looked fine and I didn't deliberately do anything "funny".



  • @El_Heffe said:

    Edit:   Hmmmm......... that might have been the one where I typed it up in Chrome, but when I previewed it I discovered that Chrome apparently doesn't play nice with the editors here, so I copied the text and pasted it into Firefox.  But still, the preview looked fine and I didn't deliberately do anything "funny".
     

    Only time I see posts with funky font stuff is when it looks like people were copy pasting things into their entry, so it probably has something to do with the weird editors (which I assume are powered through black magic and animal sacrifice based on how well they seem to work).



  • And I thought effort logging in SAP was annoying... well, pre-logging a month ahead and then changing it if necessary, to be precise.


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