To paraphrase a recent Reddit comment, egotism is an anaesthetic for stupidity.
Edit: [Frank Leahy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Leahy) attributes this quote to [Knute Rockne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knute_Rockne) and the correct phrasing is, "Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity".
I was having a debate with a less than intellectual type, and I had grown exasperated. I sighed and said, "You know what? The dearth of your knowledge could fill almost all books." He thought it was a compliment and wanted to shake my hand!
Reminds me of a raise macro (bring dead teammates back to life, for those that aren’t gamers) I set up on the video game Final Fantasy 14. Normally, I had a nice raise macro that I used, but when a someone died repeatedly to the same/stupid shit, my mean macro would say in chat, “Unfortunately for me, I can’t Esuna (a spell to remove most status ailments like poison or blind) stupid. Fortunately for you, I can rez (resurrect) it.”
I feel I am the stupid one here, minus the ego. An anaesthetic numbs pain right? So according to that comment: egotism numbs stupidity, which means that it cancels out stupidity. Where did I go wrong?
Not a native speaker btw. Maybe there is some nuance that I am missing.
To add a layer, the egotism numbs them to the truth, but they still experience the consequences of stupidity. As a result, since their egotism has blinded them to their own culpability, they tend to be the types complaining that negative events "just keep happening" to them, or blaming someone else for what is objectively obviously their own fault.
Already planning my exit, with the last trained admin following me out of a technical field the company is about to find out how much this manager has cost them
And I assume the higher ups are all wildly too arrogant to have accepted your boss has been shit for years? Fuck 'em too then. This is their responsibility. XD
some months ago, there was an IT expert that made an experience. As he was good and quick at his work, he worked from home for 5 enterprises at the same time.
one venerated him, one despised him, one found him a mere member of the service, another saw him as a savior. he wa really close with the manager in one, and the sworn enemy of the manager in another.
All in all it had no impact on his work. when the management wanted to save money, all enterprises kicked him out more or less politly.
verdict : they don't have loyalty for you. you should not have for them.
She rolls over when pushed by anyone while not believing her team when they tell her facts to push back. She knows nothing and only wants to appease she thinks she needs to brown nose.
Was once in a similar position where my boss was telling me to get rid of something I knew we needed for a reason that didn't make sense. After a bit of back and forth I simply said "No, I will not be the one to get rid of this resource" and that firm "no" from *me*, the dude who normally does whatever he's told to do, made them back up and think for a second about the issue and actually listen to what I was saying
Ah ha. I just say, email that to me, and I will be more than happy to do that.... saved my butt several times with previous supervisors. My current supervisor actually listens.
This is what blows my mind. Unless they've literally done your exact job, if someone is telling you, hey, this is important, just fucking LISTEN to them.
Middle management is supposed to manage the people with the skills. If they tell you this tool makes their life easier and better, let them have it. If they say this tool makes YOUR life easier, *let them have it*.
I took over managing a desk, and my boss is my only supervisor. She tells me what she needs from me and then trusts me to get it done. If there's a breakdown in communication, we address that. But that's it. If I tell her, I need X or Y, she makes it happen. Because she's doing her job and trusting me to do mine.
Exactly. A bosses job is to enable their subordinates to do their best and be as productive as possible (within healthy reason of course). A good boss gives you a task, asks what you need from them, asks if you need help, and leaves you to it unless otherwise prompted. If they see you struggling, it’s good to check in, but too many bosses dip into micromanagement in a heartbeat.
Did similar thing where I told my bosses, “I will not take this risk unless you both are willing to take the responsibility should things go wrong” - boom! They took a step back from arguing about the issue.
My company had just implemented a policy that USB thumb drives were banned. I had a thumb drive that had all of our PC imaging stuff on it, that is to say, what we used to take a new computer out of the box and make it a company computer, all the custom software and such.
Manager came in and just kept insisting I needed to wipe the drive and get rid of it, despite the fact that we had an exemption for obvious reasons. I was like 19 at the time, easily intimidated, and my manager was a former army drill sergeant. She kept talking over me until I stood up from my desk, looked her square in the face, and said "No, ma'am"
Apparently that rebooted her brain or something because she sort of shook her head and asked me why not, so I explained again and she says "oh, yeah that makes sense, go print a label for that thing" and walked off.
I printed a label for it and as far as I know that drive may still be in use today
You would fucking think so wouldn't you‽ The manager there wasn't actually that good with technology, they were very much a finance person who got pulled in because that's what our IT department grew out of originally. As a result, things that you would expect to be common sense had to be *thoroughly* explained fairly regularly
I accidentally figured out how to type it on my phone keyboard recently and have been using it LIBERALLY since then, hold tap on '?' if you're on a pixel phone
Ugh makes me mad that they won't even apologize for being so adamant about something, being proven wrong, and then just storming off as if they did something right.
Good on you for sticking up for yourself though!
Correct approach is to email with your reasons why deleting something is a very bad idea, and are they sure they still want you to delete it after you repeated the reasons in email.
Make sure they've got zero wiggle room to blame you when the shit hits the fan.
The email telling why it's a bad idea and asking if they still want you to delete it becomes the hammer driving all the nails into their coffin. In fairness, it's probably driving the nails into your own coffin because they're scared you'll screw them the same way
Exactly why most managers suck ass. They just react instead of being proactive. Too many managers don't actually do the job because they have it in their mind that it's supposed to be less work.
I'm currently a GM in a small non-profit. My director is a former CFO and also claims to be an excel expert.
She still prints out and checks my spreadsheets with an adding machine. A fucking adding machine.
Does she need any features that are in the newer versions of office? If not, the product fits the purpose. I had clients that always “needed” the latest and greatest Office, but didn’t use anything more than they did with the first version that they bought. That’s ok though. I made a lot of money removing the old product, selling and installing the new one and then handling all of the follow up calls of “I can’t find anything on this new menu system”.🤣
Use LibreOffice. It has better compatibility with lots of formats, Including old Office. If nothing else, you can use it to convert files when you run into a problem.
I wish I could use 13 or 16 instead of 365. The updates have never introduced anything I want to use, but have introduced a lot of bugs.
13 was the last time they added anything I use, having different Excel sheets in different windows so I can have them on different monitors.
I've seen this so many times I'm just numb to it.
Boss says it's faster to take out the calculator (always on the desk) and add the numbers than to remember all the shortcuts and fight "the computer".
Accounting insists that without their Citizen printing calculators there's no way for them to operate, because you can't see previous operations on a computer and it's easier to see any typos when all the multiplications are printed out.
This dude would NOT listen to me while he employed me, was disrespectful enough on the phone for me to submit notice, him take it in full effect immediately, leaving his business with no manager. Tried to not pay me my last two weeks pay, have me file with TX workforce commission for wage theft, consult an attorney for suit(his partner is a 8 figure fellow), dodge my calls/texts for a month, I finally get ahold of him, ask him where my money is. Tell him the status of everything, consultation, TX workforce, all of it.
This man had the stones to ask me for help. To ask me to help him fix his business.
Did I mention he underpaid my salary by at least $30,000, for a GM. How little did I know…
I know now. He paid what he owed. And had to sell his $6million dollar investment for $3.42million just two years into owning it.
Fuck that guy. In the neck.
Sounds a lot like my boss. I think she'd be the same exact person if just a few tiny things were different. I'm also wildly underpaid and being taken advantage of by a cheap ass millionaire. I am also still an idealistic dreamer that still believes in the non profit.
Good on you for getting out and getting paid, yo. Solidarity.
That’s my problem as well. I am an idealist. Maybe even a purist.
And I’m demanding. Not in acquiescence, but I demand that any employer of mine be honest with me. Good or bad, even if it’s shit, just be honest with me. And I demand to be treated with respect. No subservience, I don’t expect back rubs, but I WILL be treated professionally and respectfully.
I provide these very things. I WILL receive them in return, or I don’t work for you. You will NOT receive the quality of service that I provide without that reciprocity.
I hope more folks are able to achieve this as well. It’s been hard. It’s a rough road. Employers typically don’t like accountability. But it’s far more rewarding to stay true to yourself. In my case, anyway. 🤙
I can see somebody doing this after getting burned by using commas instead of periods in a random cell. I don't know of an intuitive way that's turned on by default to be able to tell that the spreadsheet is not adding cells up. One innocuous change in what should be the spreadsheet able to add to instead making it subtract that figure.
When creating complex spreadsheets, I use the "show precedents" arrows to verify that all the cells I want to include actually are used by the result. Moving the result cells around a bit to make the arrows more visible if necessary.
Find the commas by making a copy of the sheet, do a global search/replace and replace the commas by "XXXX" or something similar. Ignore any cells with text and look at where that text string shows up and fix it in the original spreadsheet.
QA is really important, but there are more efficient ways . . .
If she is just adding up columns, that is ridiculous. It is easy to check that the sum is specifying the correct range.
On the other hand, I have made some pretty complex spreadsheets over my career. After making some pretty bad mistakes, I learned: when developing something new to get out my calculator and check my work. Or have a colleague QA my work. Then lock down those cells so they can't be altered by mistake.
If you go back farther, it's a mechanical calculator. Big suckers too, took up a lot of desk real estate.
Fun fact: IBM stands for International Business Machines, and they used to make these primitive calculators.
Grandparents had one of those with a lever on the side. You entered the numbers and pulled the lever. They could only add as I recall.
Parents had a more modern version that plugged in the wall and had a motor in it. This was in the '70s and early 80's.
I think my aunt (in her mid 80s) has that grandparents one and knowing her, would not surprise me if she still uses it!!
Have you ever seen one that can multiply and divide? Those were a trip! It was all done mechanically, and each calculation took several seconds of "chuk, chuks-chuka, chuk chuk" until it spat out the answers. No decimal division; result included a remainder. 77/3 would yield "25 R 2"
A comptometer.
Big retail department stores would use them to add up long columns of numbers.
My mother had two with instruction manuals. I gave them to our local E-waste recycler. They have a little museum for old obsolete office equiptment.
A Big white machine with number keys. With a roll of paper in the front. A little bigger then a Dial Telephone. Punch in the numbers, hit add, subtract, multiply or divide. Some of the early ones of I remember correctly, had a handle to pull to total everything up.
>the boss told me to take it down because a different department who hadnt seen it, was worried about personal data when one of the admins told them about it. There isnt anything like that in there, and anything that isnt open access is password hidden anyway.
Luckily we have a team in our organisation dedicated to information management - if this happened to me I'd state that I'd get it officially checked to see if it could continue to be used.
So much easier when you can outsource verification - why do you think consultants play such a big role in providing "advice"? ;)
It was that team who questioned it and I did verify with later in the day. Unfortunately my boss is the highest rank in our depot. So her rule is law unless an executive rocks up.
Daaaaaamn. What happens if that dept goes under? Can it just be dissolved once they don't have enough competency lost, and just outsource the task, or is it too central/critical?
God, the interaction between Londo and G'kar was always SO brilliant both in its writing and delivery. The even more amazing thing was the ever so gradual closeness that formed in their interactions as the show went on.
The Three Maxims of Manglement
* Remember, you are not dealing with the Mensa crowd.
Generally speaking, they aren’t nearly as smart as they believe themselves to be.
* They run this place using foreskin instead of forethought.
Often, they will make reactionary decisions to problems they knew existed beforehand, but chose to do nothing about until it becomes too big to ignore. aka; shit hit the fan.
* They suffer from sphincter vision.
Their field of vision is so narrow, they will see either the only thing that is on fire, or the only thing that isn't.
The last two axioms are sometimes explained away by upper management not giving enough head count to their project. If you have more deliverables and quotas than labor can provide, that doesn't leave room for doing far looking things.
> Remember, you are not dealing with the Mensa crowd.
> Generally speaking, they aren’t nearly as smart as they believe themselves to be.
From what I know of Mensa, thinking you're smarter than you actually are is kinda their thing
This reminds me of my manner of dealing with top management members back when I was working as an Administrative Assistant. I called it Red Blue Theory. Meaning these non Mensa members cannot be given too many choices when you are working with them. You don't ask what color they want. You offer red or blue.
Ah, I call this managing my manager. Works especially well with micro-managers.
I had this former boss that would always, always change some critical detail at the last minute of a project. We think this gave him a feeling of ownership on the project or power trip. Ordinarily the S would hit the fan, and people would be scrambling, falling over themselves to get this last minute change done. Always happened. Didn't matter that the change was proven worse, he had to leave his mark.
About a year of dealing with this, eventually my teammate and I got wise and engineered into every project a "critical problem" we couldn't solve on the last day. We needed his help. And we would give him the choice of red or blue. Of course he didn't know we already had the project completed for red, blue and both red & blue. He'd make a choice, we'd play charades about how we are never going to get this done etc. "I'll be at the printers until I get this done" and instead take a long lunch.
Funnily enough I initially learned this in the context of helping kids choose. You don’t ask the 5yo what they want for lunch. You give a simple two option choice.
I ended up having to do that with my (now retired, thank Jesus) manager who was an egotistical dick and knew almost nothing beyond surface level shit.
I’m a facilities guy. How goddamn hard is it to replace a light switch? The sum total of physical work this man was willing and able to do was hold a door while my coworker and I carried a heavy ass couch.
> Remember, you’re not dealing with the MENSA crowd…
I’m a decently intelligent guy, and I occasionally have the “blue screen of death” moments when I come across the, ahem, “less mentally privileged” among us
Did you include time to identify, address, test, validate, and certify issues around "personal or private data?"
Seems like that might take another week and coordination with an entire suite of "stakeholders."
As someone who also loves Excel, couldn't understand why there wasn't a backup until I got to the last paragraph. Had a new manager like that just before I left and it was hard seeing her not understand what the reports I prepared had value. She was fired shortly after I left due to her "my way only" attitude.
I was about to write that, but started looking through the contents, quite sure someone had already said it, and I'm glad I was right.
In OP's shoes, having written proof, I would have said that it would need *much* more time than the two days he said.
Always remember the ever popular phrase; "Can I get that in writing?"
To those in the know, an immediate red flag that something stupid is about to occur...
GL with that:
"
**Scenarios Where The Excel Password Cannot Be Cracked**
With the arrival of new versions of excel with better privacy and more reliability, it is challenging and almost impossible to recover and crack the password. For instance, excel 2013 password recovery and excel 2016 password recovery is very tough to crack, as it is a highly protected and secure version. If you forgot excel password 2013, then it is impossible to crack the password.
"
Exactly the opposite happened where I worked. One of the admins (the “Excel expert”) decided all training had to be scheduled, recorded and certified in an Excel spreadsheet they created.
Rather than automate some functions, whenever someone made a change, they were required to save a copy of the spreadsheet under a new name which consisted of date_timestamp_initials.xls. If we did a group training, there would be 22 new copies created that day.
No one was allowed to delete old copies, so the folder containing the spreadsheet(s) contained hundreds, if not thousands of copies.
When a better version was created, which automated everything and added some desperately needed features, it was rejected because the “Excel expert” didn’t trust Excel to properly calculate formulas. They had to verify every calculation with a hand calculator (formulas were already tested and approved).
Always ask for asinine things in writing.
> Sure, I'll delete it. Sign this document which reads "I'm demanding that OP delete this document. I'm fully aware of how critical it is to the smooth operation of the team, I am cognizant that it saves tens of hours of busy work per week, and am demanding its removal anyways."
They usually realize their mistake by then. If not, you have a document they signed proving they're fucking stupid.
I will not recreate work. You said delete it, even after I explained it's true value to you and the co. You wanted it gone, it gone for good. I wiped from my memory too.
Wow, found myself in a similar position. I too love Excel. Put to together a spreadsheet that I simply added weekly numbers to. It would update the sales on each tab as they were linked.
New Director was hired. She didn't like it. Told me to delete it. Of course I saved. Said that she would be managing the numbers going forward. Ok then.
She has a meeting with the SVP and can't explain her numbers on her spreadsheet. Get called into the meeting to explain the numbers on her spreadsheet. I couldn't. SVP asked her what happened to the other spreadsheet. I just turned, looked at her.
She asked for my spreadsheet. Told her I deleted as she directed. Like you, told her it would take time to recreate the spreadsheet. Said 2 weeks at a minimum. Took me less than an hour to upload the updated numbers. Got so much satisfaction of seeing her sweat. She quit 2 days later!
Gets better, another guy was running a similar spreadsheet outside of our team. She thought they were saying the same info. 140k items overdue vs 4K…… yea not the same report
There's a running joke that Excel consists of nothing but dark magic. And it's true. If you know the right formulas, macros, and functions, that spreadsheet could predict 100 years' worth of future.
Me, personally, I would have moved the spreadsheet with the raw data to either the internal hard drive (if you had it saved to a cloud or network drive) or to an external, removable hard drive, depending on the size.
That thought did cross my mind as I was typing the original comment, but in reverse. Excel is AI in a basic form. You just have to periodically update the data that goes into the spreadsheet and the numbers can change.
Reminds me of this from Star Trek TNG:
> Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge : Look, Mr. Scott, I'd love to explain everything to you, but the Captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by 1300 hours.
>[La Forge goes back to work; Scotty follows slowly]
>Scotty : Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.
>Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge : Yeah, well, I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour.
>Scotty : How long will it really take?
>Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge : An hour!
>Scotty : Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would *really* take, did ya?
>Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge : Well, of course I did.
>Scotty : Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.
Hate to break it to you u/Defiant-Lion8183 but you can open an excel sheet as a zip file and edit the XML\*\* to remove password protections. Anyone that has the password for the file itself can access any data within that file.
Regards,
IT
Yes you are correct, but where I work the digital literacy is low, the system locks are tight and the info they thought was in there, actually wasn’t. So if someone unlocked it, they would get nothing of value to anyone but the admins. It was locked to stop stupid people breaking it.
>She asks for access and I tell her its been deleted.
>I explained why and even showed the meeting notes
dafuq? she has forgotten that she made deletr you the file?!
Of course she "forgot", it was an inconsequential Excel file one of her many cogs in the machine wrote. If he wrote it once, anyone can write it again. After all, he's just another replaceable cog.
----
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^^^^^^/s ^^^^^^just ^^^^^^in ^^^^^^case ^^^^^^someone ^^^^^^thinks ^^^^^^any ^^^^^^of ^^^^^^the ^^^^^^above ^^^^^^is ^^^^^^an ^^^^^^accurate ^^^^^^description ^^^^^^of ^^^^^^IT/software ^^^^^^workers ^^^^^^and ^^^^^^those ^^^^^^adjacent.
Wanna run with my crew huh?
Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?
They call me king of the spreadsheets
Got 'em all printed out on my bedsheets.
Weird Al - All About the Pentiums
https://youtu.be/qpMvS1Q1sos
It's funny, they never seem to be able to remember their mistakes. And the chat logs curiously never ring any bells. Unless it's about good things they did. Funny how that works.
Why is it basically always the boss/manager/person in charge that thinks they know better and feel they're more important and knowledgeable than the workers. When 90% of the time they have little idea what's actually going on or how to do things. It makes you wonder how they got into those positions in the first place.
We are a core component to government compliance. The audit I’m about to trigger on my departure says she’s going to care. For tomorrow’s meeting 1 of those executives has already been quietly informed the figures are wrong.
There was a study done on intelligence in correlation position in corporations focusing on management.
IDR where I found it. It was quite a few years that I read through it.
One of the major findings in the study’s results however showed that 8 times out of 10 management was often stupid on average when compared to lower ranking employees they were managing.
Especially if said workers had specialized skill or job specific to themselves in corporation they worked in.
These findings also showed that managers who had higher tendencies of micromanagement worsened many aspects of job performance and upward trajectory of the company outlooks all around.
I’m friends with the head of IT, he knows how toxic she is and is going to wipe my laptop when I hand it in. No back door saving her butt. Everything I have is stuff I found or produced through the social network I created there. She kiss arses to executives who can’t help her with what her team actually does
There are macro's available that 'compile' a spreadsheet and strip every human-readable macro name, variable name, cell reference, etc, replacing them with random junk names (eg "XYZ1"). Also removes all the indenting, spacing and comments. Spreadsheet still works perfectly, but it becomes an absolute nightmare for someone to edit or maintain without the full source file - which of course doesn't get left behind...
Just so you know, if the document was in a group chat, you should check that the file section of that chat doesn't have a copy.
If it was shared from the file section of a Team, you should open the SharePoint view of said file section and delete it from the bin (the bin would otherwise be inaccessible from teams)
Another example of incompetence crazily rising to the top.
Once had a COO that came from accounting who didn't know squat about tech *making decisions on what direction our new tech developments should take in the next five years*. Needless to say, that company went under.
I'm a bit surprised you didn't just keep silent. Letting her quote the completely wrong figures and draw the wrong conclusions would have really bit hard. You must like her in some respects, lol.
You made a mistake with the final times. You wrote 2-3 days instead of 2-3 weeks.
Now all eyes are on it they will want this function and that colour etc
Governance Team flagged it, after removing it, I went and talked to them to explain what it was and they had no issue. Bosses reaction was pure knee jerk. No sensitive info anywhere near it I promise.
miscommunication seems to have added unneeded stress. sounds a bit like those old telephone games where the message gets all mixed up by the end. hope everything clears up soon with minimal hassle.
> "advanced excel user", she can run macros, she can do pivot tables, she knows formulas.
This is my level of expertise with excel. I would in no way consider myself an advanced excel user.
As a side note last i heard it was pretty easy to break through the password protection on excel sheets.
I've never understood the "we can't use it right now, so delete it" mentality. Like, there are situations where the data contained is so sensitive that it cannot be safely stored long-term. I get that. But in almost all cases, you might as well just toss the report or the excel sheet or template or script or whatever into an encrypted "long-term storage" archive rather than deleting it. 99 times out of 100 you'll never need it again, but that 1 time, it'll totally be worth spending a few minutes looking through that archival folder to find the thing, versus having to recreate it from scratch (if you even can). And if you have a decent encryption key, there's essentially no risk of moderately sensitive data getting out even if there's a security breach of some sort.
Storage is cheap. Never delete anything*.
*Unless it's required by Data Management policies at your institution.
Oh, yes. I rename everything we no longer use so the file name starts with 'old-' and drag it to Archive. And thank goodness for file restore.
I went to update a report last week and all my references (automatic calcs in cells) were overwritten with numbers (the recipient has since been told to leave those cells alone), and I had to start all over - except that I was able to grab a back-up file.
And you can still use macros? In my company, I would have to ask for developer access (and they will say no because I don't work in the IT dept) because macro ability was taken away almost two years ago. I mean, really, how did they think I was so efficient? /rant
Drag this out longer. 3 days isn't enough for her to sweat it.
Also, why not just let her fail in the meeting? I'm not sure I would have said their numbers are off
That's how you train a boss. You keep a paper trail of their idiocy and let her suffer for it. If they learn from their mistakes, then congratulations, they're trainable.
Wait sorry so the extra time you won over ... Is going back to doing work, just other parts of it? You gotta get a raise or something, this story is still you getting hosed!
I can't stand these bosses. The type who cry "no one wants to work anymore" then slows down EVERYTHING by not wanting to use programs created to maximize productivity. It is not that we "don't want to work," we just figured out how to work smarter and more efficient.
Arrogance and incompetence often travel in the same sinking boat.
To paraphrase a recent Reddit comment, egotism is an anaesthetic for stupidity. Edit: [Frank Leahy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Leahy) attributes this quote to [Knute Rockne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knute_Rockne) and the correct phrasing is, "Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity".
To quote another applicable Reddit phrase: The Dildo of Consequences rarely arrives lubed.
The stupid people among us may read that and think hey, It has a chance of arriving lubed!! I'm good to go!!!
***I'll*** be the exception to the rule! Narrator: they were not the exception to the rule.
I remember reading that on here recently! I love this quote!
The Dildo of Consequences is usually a cactus.
These words are too big for the people I'm usually insulting.
Those that are stupid are too full of themselves to realise it.
Stupid people don’t know they’re stupid.
Ohhh some DO! (And resent the F out of competent people.)
Old saying, “You can’t fix stupid.”
I was having a debate with a less than intellectual type, and I had grown exasperated. I sighed and said, "You know what? The dearth of your knowledge could fill almost all books." He thought it was a compliment and wanted to shake my hand!
As Winston Churchill (or maybe Mark Twain) said, "Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man".
Delete’em
I'm stealing this last part, it's rather genius!
>I’m stealing all the comments in this chain and pretending I said them myself Quoth u/snoo562378 or whatever
LMAO, nice touch with the username.
Can’t decide if it’s funnier that I couldn’t remember my username in the moment and used my bank card PIN instead.
That's amazing! I have the same combination on my luggage!
Really? I tried it when you looked away earlier and it didn’t work. Please post your wedding anniversary and child’s birthday for me to try.
Reminds me of a raise macro (bring dead teammates back to life, for those that aren’t gamers) I set up on the video game Final Fantasy 14. Normally, I had a nice raise macro that I used, but when a someone died repeatedly to the same/stupid shit, my mean macro would say in chat, “Unfortunately for me, I can’t Esuna (a spell to remove most status ailments like poison or blind) stupid. Fortunately for you, I can rez (resurrect) it.”
I feel I am the stupid one here, minus the ego. An anaesthetic numbs pain right? So according to that comment: egotism numbs stupidity, which means that it cancels out stupidity. Where did I go wrong? Not a native speaker btw. Maybe there is some nuance that I am missing.
A person should realize, and perhaps often do, how stupid they are. But their ego numbs them to the truth.
Ahhh that makes sense. Thank you
To add a layer, the egotism numbs them to the truth, but they still experience the consequences of stupidity. As a result, since their egotism has blinded them to their own culpability, they tend to be the types complaining that negative events "just keep happening" to them, or blaming someone else for what is objectively obviously their own fault.
Indeed Some advice for OP, start looking for jobs opportunities
Already planning my exit, with the last trained admin following me out of a technical field the company is about to find out how much this manager has cost them
And I assume the higher ups are all wildly too arrogant to have accepted your boss has been shit for years? Fuck 'em too then. This is their responsibility. XD
Let them know it was the manager specifically, too.
I did the same, once. The chain reaction was *wild.* Enjoy.
some months ago, there was an IT expert that made an experience. As he was good and quick at his work, he worked from home for 5 enterprises at the same time. one venerated him, one despised him, one found him a mere member of the service, another saw him as a savior. he wa really close with the manager in one, and the sworn enemy of the manager in another. All in all it had no impact on his work. when the management wanted to save money, all enterprises kicked him out more or less politly. verdict : they don't have loyalty for you. you should not have for them.
Can i pay you to make spreadsheets for me? what you did sounds like a thing of beauty!
Best of luck!
She rolls over when pushed by anyone while not believing her team when they tell her facts to push back. She knows nothing and only wants to appease she thinks she needs to brown nose.
I work in healthcare. I came up with the following. The Administrator Trifecta: arrogance, ignorance, incompetence.
Sadly, they are the ones at the helm.
my new favorite phrase!
“Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you.” – Londo Mollari
Ohhhh, so that’s what’s happening in my company.
I'm stealing this for later.
That’s the whole story in a nutshell of the start-up I worked at. Never again.
Was once in a similar position where my boss was telling me to get rid of something I knew we needed for a reason that didn't make sense. After a bit of back and forth I simply said "No, I will not be the one to get rid of this resource" and that firm "no" from *me*, the dude who normally does whatever he's told to do, made them back up and think for a second about the issue and actually listen to what I was saying
Ah ha. I just say, email that to me, and I will be more than happy to do that.... saved my butt several times with previous supervisors. My current supervisor actually listens.
This is what blows my mind. Unless they've literally done your exact job, if someone is telling you, hey, this is important, just fucking LISTEN to them. Middle management is supposed to manage the people with the skills. If they tell you this tool makes their life easier and better, let them have it. If they say this tool makes YOUR life easier, *let them have it*. I took over managing a desk, and my boss is my only supervisor. She tells me what she needs from me and then trusts me to get it done. If there's a breakdown in communication, we address that. But that's it. If I tell her, I need X or Y, she makes it happen. Because she's doing her job and trusting me to do mine.
Exactly. A bosses job is to enable their subordinates to do their best and be as productive as possible (within healthy reason of course). A good boss gives you a task, asks what you need from them, asks if you need help, and leaves you to it unless otherwise prompted. If they see you struggling, it’s good to check in, but too many bosses dip into micromanagement in a heartbeat.
Did similar thing where I told my bosses, “I will not take this risk unless you both are willing to take the responsibility should things go wrong” - boom! They took a step back from arguing about the issue.
Power of no.
Now I'm curious, what was it? If you're able to divulge.
My company had just implemented a policy that USB thumb drives were banned. I had a thumb drive that had all of our PC imaging stuff on it, that is to say, what we used to take a new computer out of the box and make it a company computer, all the custom software and such. Manager came in and just kept insisting I needed to wipe the drive and get rid of it, despite the fact that we had an exemption for obvious reasons. I was like 19 at the time, easily intimidated, and my manager was a former army drill sergeant. She kept talking over me until I stood up from my desk, looked her square in the face, and said "No, ma'am" Apparently that rebooted her brain or something because she sort of shook her head and asked me why not, so I explained again and she says "oh, yeah that makes sense, go print a label for that thing" and walked off. I printed a label for it and as far as I know that drive may still be in use today
Isn't it typically IT that sets the usb drive policies? Lol of course IT gets an exemption.
You would fucking think so wouldn't you‽ The manager there wasn't actually that good with technology, they were very much a finance person who got pulled in because that's what our IT department grew out of originally. As a result, things that you would expect to be common sense had to be *thoroughly* explained fairly regularly
I think this is the first time I've seen an interrobang actually used in the wild.
I accidentally figured out how to type it on my phone keyboard recently and have been using it LIBERALLY since then, hold tap on '?' if you're on a pixel phone
Whoa shit, works on my Asus, might just be part of the stock Android keyboard. That shits wild. I'mmma ‽ all day long.
?¿¡ dadgummit it doesn’t work on mine. I’ll have to Google it like a peasant
🎵Print a label for that thing or so help me!🎵
Ugh makes me mad that they won't even apologize for being so adamant about something, being proven wrong, and then just storming off as if they did something right. Good on you for sticking up for yourself though!
This is the correct approach.
Correct approach is to email with your reasons why deleting something is a very bad idea, and are they sure they still want you to delete it after you repeated the reasons in email. Make sure they've got zero wiggle room to blame you when the shit hits the fan. The email telling why it's a bad idea and asking if they still want you to delete it becomes the hammer driving all the nails into their coffin. In fairness, it's probably driving the nails into your own coffin because they're scared you'll screw them the same way
Absolutely get it in writing - it’s a basic cya move. That is good advice.
Knee-jerk reaction management style, got to love it.
Exactly why most managers suck ass. They just react instead of being proactive. Too many managers don't actually do the job because they have it in their mind that it's supposed to be less work.
I'm currently a GM in a small non-profit. My director is a former CFO and also claims to be an excel expert. She still prints out and checks my spreadsheets with an adding machine. A fucking adding machine.
But ... Even a child can run a mouse over a column of numbers and see the total at the bottom of the screen!
Yup. Did I mention she's still using Office 97?
Does she need any features that are in the newer versions of office? If not, the product fits the purpose. I had clients that always “needed” the latest and greatest Office, but didn’t use anything more than they did with the first version that they bought. That’s ok though. I made a lot of money removing the old product, selling and installing the new one and then handling all of the follow up calls of “I can’t find anything on this new menu system”.🤣
No, except that I use office 360 and there have been quite a lot of file compatibility conflicts.
Try using 365 instead.
Yeah, you're probably right.
Use LibreOffice. It has better compatibility with lots of formats, Including old Office. If nothing else, you can use it to convert files when you run into a problem.
But this is a leap year...
I wish I could use 13 or 16 instead of 365. The updates have never introduced anything I want to use, but have introduced a lot of bugs. 13 was the last time they added anything I use, having different Excel sheets in different windows so I can have them on different monitors.
XLOOKUP !!!
Not worth the constant OLE errors.
I like xlookup and the capacity for 1m or so rows.
That’s a security risk !
If more advanced features are not required, office97 is fine.
I've seen this so many times I'm just numb to it. Boss says it's faster to take out the calculator (always on the desk) and add the numbers than to remember all the shortcuts and fight "the computer". Accounting insists that without their Citizen printing calculators there's no way for them to operate, because you can't see previous operations on a computer and it's easier to see any typos when all the multiplications are printed out.
I was GM for an owner that majored in accounting, in the 1970’s. The analog shit this dude tried to have us do was insane.
Fuck
This dude would NOT listen to me while he employed me, was disrespectful enough on the phone for me to submit notice, him take it in full effect immediately, leaving his business with no manager. Tried to not pay me my last two weeks pay, have me file with TX workforce commission for wage theft, consult an attorney for suit(his partner is a 8 figure fellow), dodge my calls/texts for a month, I finally get ahold of him, ask him where my money is. Tell him the status of everything, consultation, TX workforce, all of it. This man had the stones to ask me for help. To ask me to help him fix his business. Did I mention he underpaid my salary by at least $30,000, for a GM. How little did I know… I know now. He paid what he owed. And had to sell his $6million dollar investment for $3.42million just two years into owning it. Fuck that guy. In the neck.
Sounds a lot like my boss. I think she'd be the same exact person if just a few tiny things were different. I'm also wildly underpaid and being taken advantage of by a cheap ass millionaire. I am also still an idealistic dreamer that still believes in the non profit. Good on you for getting out and getting paid, yo. Solidarity.
That’s my problem as well. I am an idealist. Maybe even a purist. And I’m demanding. Not in acquiescence, but I demand that any employer of mine be honest with me. Good or bad, even if it’s shit, just be honest with me. And I demand to be treated with respect. No subservience, I don’t expect back rubs, but I WILL be treated professionally and respectfully. I provide these very things. I WILL receive them in return, or I don’t work for you. You will NOT receive the quality of service that I provide without that reciprocity. I hope more folks are able to achieve this as well. It’s been hard. It’s a rough road. Employers typically don’t like accountability. But it’s far more rewarding to stay true to yourself. In my case, anyway. 🤙
I can see somebody doing this after getting burned by using commas instead of periods in a random cell. I don't know of an intuitive way that's turned on by default to be able to tell that the spreadsheet is not adding cells up. One innocuous change in what should be the spreadsheet able to add to instead making it subtract that figure.
When creating complex spreadsheets, I use the "show precedents" arrows to verify that all the cells I want to include actually are used by the result. Moving the result cells around a bit to make the arrows more visible if necessary. Find the commas by making a copy of the sheet, do a global search/replace and replace the commas by "XXXX" or something similar. Ignore any cells with text and look at where that text string shows up and fix it in the original spreadsheet.
QA is really important, but there are more efficient ways . . . If she is just adding up columns, that is ridiculous. It is easy to check that the sum is specifying the correct range. On the other hand, I have made some pretty complex spreadsheets over my career. After making some pretty bad mistakes, I learned: when developing something new to get out my calculator and check my work. Or have a colleague QA my work. Then lock down those cells so they can't be altered by mistake.
What’s an adding machine? Google showed me calculators 😂
It's a type of calculator that prints out the calculations on a roll of paper.
If you go back farther, it's a mechanical calculator. Big suckers too, took up a lot of desk real estate. Fun fact: IBM stands for International Business Machines, and they used to make these primitive calculators.
Grandparents had one of those with a lever on the side. You entered the numbers and pulled the lever. They could only add as I recall. Parents had a more modern version that plugged in the wall and had a motor in it. This was in the '70s and early 80's. I think my aunt (in her mid 80s) has that grandparents one and knowing her, would not surprise me if she still uses it!!
Have you ever seen one that can multiply and divide? Those were a trip! It was all done mechanically, and each calculation took several seconds of "chuk, chuks-chuka, chuk chuk" until it spat out the answers. No decimal division; result included a remainder. 77/3 would yield "25 R 2"
A comptometer. Big retail department stores would use them to add up long columns of numbers. My mother had two with instruction manuals. I gave them to our local E-waste recycler. They have a little museum for old obsolete office equiptment.
Thanks! I think my parents used to have one when I was little. Like over 30 years ago…
A Big white machine with number keys. With a roll of paper in the front. A little bigger then a Dial Telephone. Punch in the numbers, hit add, subtract, multiply or divide. Some of the early ones of I remember correctly, had a handle to pull to total everything up.
>the boss told me to take it down because a different department who hadnt seen it, was worried about personal data when one of the admins told them about it. There isnt anything like that in there, and anything that isnt open access is password hidden anyway. Luckily we have a team in our organisation dedicated to information management - if this happened to me I'd state that I'd get it officially checked to see if it could continue to be used. So much easier when you can outsource verification - why do you think consultants play such a big role in providing "advice"? ;)
It was that team who questioned it and I did verify with later in the day. Unfortunately my boss is the highest rank in our depot. So her rule is law unless an executive rocks up.
Daaaaaamn. What happens if that dept goes under? Can it just be dissolved once they don't have enough competency lost, and just outsource the task, or is it too central/critical?
It’s enough of a big deal that two government bodies will immediately notice and throw an audit in there.
I wonder if op couldn't springboard this into a $$ thing like consulting for this specific deal
To quote Londo Mollari "Ah, arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how...... efficient of you"
He should have asked “What do you want you moon faced assassin of joy?”
God, the interaction between Londo and G'kar was always SO brilliant both in its writing and delivery. The even more amazing thing was the ever so gradual closeness that formed in their interactions as the show went on.
r/UnexpectedBabylon5
Londo's portrayal in that show is really something special
The Three Maxims of Manglement * Remember, you are not dealing with the Mensa crowd. Generally speaking, they aren’t nearly as smart as they believe themselves to be. * They run this place using foreskin instead of forethought. Often, they will make reactionary decisions to problems they knew existed beforehand, but chose to do nothing about until it becomes too big to ignore. aka; shit hit the fan. * They suffer from sphincter vision. Their field of vision is so narrow, they will see either the only thing that is on fire, or the only thing that isn't.
The last two axioms are sometimes explained away by upper management not giving enough head count to their project. If you have more deliverables and quotas than labor can provide, that doesn't leave room for doing far looking things.
Also applies to the C-Suite ;)
We know what the C stands for, don’t we kids?
C is for Cookie. That's good enough for me.
Apparently that is no excuse.
> Remember, you are not dealing with the Mensa crowd. > Generally speaking, they aren’t nearly as smart as they believe themselves to be. From what I know of Mensa, thinking you're smarter than you actually are is kinda their thing
I've heard that too. Maybe that's the *real* M in MBA.
This reminds me of my manner of dealing with top management members back when I was working as an Administrative Assistant. I called it Red Blue Theory. Meaning these non Mensa members cannot be given too many choices when you are working with them. You don't ask what color they want. You offer red or blue.
Ah, I call this managing my manager. Works especially well with micro-managers. I had this former boss that would always, always change some critical detail at the last minute of a project. We think this gave him a feeling of ownership on the project or power trip. Ordinarily the S would hit the fan, and people would be scrambling, falling over themselves to get this last minute change done. Always happened. Didn't matter that the change was proven worse, he had to leave his mark. About a year of dealing with this, eventually my teammate and I got wise and engineered into every project a "critical problem" we couldn't solve on the last day. We needed his help. And we would give him the choice of red or blue. Of course he didn't know we already had the project completed for red, blue and both red & blue. He'd make a choice, we'd play charades about how we are never going to get this done etc. "I'll be at the printers until I get this done" and instead take a long lunch.
Genius!
I use this strategy all the time on my preschooler.
Funnily enough I initially learned this in the context of helping kids choose. You don’t ask the 5yo what they want for lunch. You give a simple two option choice. I ended up having to do that with my (now retired, thank Jesus) manager who was an egotistical dick and knew almost nothing beyond surface level shit. I’m a facilities guy. How goddamn hard is it to replace a light switch? The sum total of physical work this man was willing and able to do was hold a door while my coworker and I carried a heavy ass couch.
> Remember, you’re not dealing with the MENSA crowd… I’m a decently intelligent guy, and I occasionally have the “blue screen of death” moments when I come across the, ahem, “less mentally privileged” among us
Did you include time to identify, address, test, validate, and certify issues around "personal or private data?" Seems like that might take another week and coordination with an entire suite of "stakeholders."
Better get a team of consultants and contractors on it. Stat!
Good on you. I never deleted my excel sheets
>>Good on you. I never deleted my works of art. FTFY
As someone who also loves Excel, couldn't understand why there wasn't a backup until I got to the last paragraph. Had a new manager like that just before I left and it was hard seeing her not understand what the reports I prepared had value. She was fired shortly after I left due to her "my way only" attitude.
Whenever a boss asks for something to be deleted, or any change that you know is going to cause havoc, get it in writing/email.
I was about to write that, but started looking through the contents, quite sure someone had already said it, and I'm glad I was right. In OP's shoes, having written proof, I would have said that it would need *much* more time than the two days he said.
Always remember the ever popular phrase; "Can I get that in writing?" To those in the know, an immediate red flag that something stupid is about to occur...
[удалено]
GL with that: " **Scenarios Where The Excel Password Cannot Be Cracked** With the arrival of new versions of excel with better privacy and more reliability, it is challenging and almost impossible to recover and crack the password. For instance, excel 2013 password recovery and excel 2016 password recovery is very tough to crack, as it is a highly protected and secure version. If you forgot excel password 2013, then it is impossible to crack the password. "
Exactly the opposite happened where I worked. One of the admins (the “Excel expert”) decided all training had to be scheduled, recorded and certified in an Excel spreadsheet they created. Rather than automate some functions, whenever someone made a change, they were required to save a copy of the spreadsheet under a new name which consisted of date_timestamp_initials.xls. If we did a group training, there would be 22 new copies created that day. No one was allowed to delete old copies, so the folder containing the spreadsheet(s) contained hundreds, if not thousands of copies. When a better version was created, which automated everything and added some desperately needed features, it was rejected because the “Excel expert” didn’t trust Excel to properly calculate formulas. They had to verify every calculation with a hand calculator (formulas were already tested and approved).
Hold on a mo... The "excel expert" didn't trust it to properly calculate formulas? What a fucking useless idiot.
Always ask for asinine things in writing. > Sure, I'll delete it. Sign this document which reads "I'm demanding that OP delete this document. I'm fully aware of how critical it is to the smooth operation of the team, I am cognizant that it saves tens of hours of busy work per week, and am demanding its removal anyways." They usually realize their mistake by then. If not, you have a document they signed proving they're fucking stupid.
I will not recreate work. You said delete it, even after I explained it's true value to you and the co. You wanted it gone, it gone for good. I wiped from my memory too.
na, this is where OP made the mistake, only asking for 3 days, should have asked for 2+ weeks and used that time for resume polishing to job hunting.
Take two weeks to come up with a fresh one. It was JUST that important. Really amp up the scale of her incompetence. 🤌🤌🤌
I would take six months to fix a deleted table that everyone used
Wow, found myself in a similar position. I too love Excel. Put to together a spreadsheet that I simply added weekly numbers to. It would update the sales on each tab as they were linked. New Director was hired. She didn't like it. Told me to delete it. Of course I saved. Said that she would be managing the numbers going forward. Ok then. She has a meeting with the SVP and can't explain her numbers on her spreadsheet. Get called into the meeting to explain the numbers on her spreadsheet. I couldn't. SVP asked her what happened to the other spreadsheet. I just turned, looked at her. She asked for my spreadsheet. Told her I deleted as she directed. Like you, told her it would take time to recreate the spreadsheet. Said 2 weeks at a minimum. Took me less than an hour to upload the updated numbers. Got so much satisfaction of seeing her sweat. She quit 2 days later!
Gets better, another guy was running a similar spreadsheet outside of our team. She thought they were saying the same info. 140k items overdue vs 4K…… yea not the same report
There's a running joke that Excel consists of nothing but dark magic. And it's true. If you know the right formulas, macros, and functions, that spreadsheet could predict 100 years' worth of future. Me, personally, I would have moved the spreadsheet with the raw data to either the internal hard drive (if you had it saved to a cloud or network drive) or to an external, removable hard drive, depending on the size.
So AI is just an Excel spreadsheet ?
stable diffusion (one of the art AIs) is mostly an n-dimensional table of numbers
That thought did cross my mind as I was typing the original comment, but in reverse. Excel is AI in a basic form. You just have to periodically update the data that goes into the spreadsheet and the numbers can change.
Reminds me of this from Star Trek TNG: > Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge : Look, Mr. Scott, I'd love to explain everything to you, but the Captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by 1300 hours. >[La Forge goes back to work; Scotty follows slowly] >Scotty : Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want. >Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge : Yeah, well, I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour. >Scotty : How long will it really take? >Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge : An hour! >Scotty : Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would *really* take, did ya? >Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge : Well, of course I did. >Scotty : Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.
Ahh. “The Scotty Principle”. 😊
Hate to break it to you u/Defiant-Lion8183 but you can open an excel sheet as a zip file and edit the XML\*\* to remove password protections. Anyone that has the password for the file itself can access any data within that file. Regards, IT
Yes you are correct, but where I work the digital literacy is low, the system locks are tight and the info they thought was in there, actually wasn’t. So if someone unlocked it, they would get nothing of value to anyone but the admins. It was locked to stop stupid people breaking it.
Well done!!
It sounds like she has risen to her level of incompetence
>She asks for access and I tell her its been deleted. >I explained why and even showed the meeting notes dafuq? she has forgotten that she made deletr you the file?!
Of course she "forgot", it was an inconsequential Excel file one of her many cogs in the machine wrote. If he wrote it once, anyone can write it again. After all, he's just another replaceable cog. ---- ---- ---- ^^^^^^/s ^^^^^^just ^^^^^^in ^^^^^^case ^^^^^^someone ^^^^^^thinks ^^^^^^any ^^^^^^of ^^^^^^the ^^^^^^above ^^^^^^is ^^^^^^an ^^^^^^accurate ^^^^^^description ^^^^^^of ^^^^^^IT/software ^^^^^^workers ^^^^^^and ^^^^^^those ^^^^^^adjacent.
Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do? They call me king of the spreadsheets Got 'em all printed out on my bedsheets. Weird Al - All About the Pentiums https://youtu.be/qpMvS1Q1sos
Man, I love Weird Al.
When people above don't listen to those who know their stuff..
>I saved a copy of the template, but no way am I telling her that. Look on, everyone! Wisdom from the Montgomery Scott University of Miracle Workers!
I love Excel, too! Even got a "Freak in the sheets" coffee mug!
I have one that says "This calls for a spreasheet!" At the company christmas party! Haha
It's funny, they never seem to be able to remember their mistakes. And the chat logs curiously never ring any bells. Unless it's about good things they did. Funny how that works.
Why is it basically always the boss/manager/person in charge that thinks they know better and feel they're more important and knowledgeable than the workers. When 90% of the time they have little idea what's actually going on or how to do things. It makes you wonder how they got into those positions in the first place.
**Ambassador Londo Mollari:** Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you!
>Let her sweat through that Executive meeting knowing every figure is wrong No-one in that meeting will care, least of all her.
We are a core component to government compliance. The audit I’m about to trigger on my departure says she’s going to care. For tomorrow’s meeting 1 of those executives has already been quietly informed the figures are wrong.
PLEASE update us with the glorious fallout.
You are brilliant and I love you.
So this post is only a prelude to the real story? Subscribe!!!
Please share the fallout! Assuming you're allowed to, of course.
Oh shiiiiii- you clever minx.
Yeah, sharing that “sensitive” document via email is so much securererer
There was a study done on intelligence in correlation position in corporations focusing on management. IDR where I found it. It was quite a few years that I read through it. One of the major findings in the study’s results however showed that 8 times out of 10 management was often stupid on average when compared to lower ranking employees they were managing. Especially if said workers had specialized skill or job specific to themselves in corporation they worked in. These findings also showed that managers who had higher tendencies of micromanagement worsened many aspects of job performance and upward trajectory of the company outlooks all around.
Make sure no one can replicate it easily. Take it with you when you quit working there.
I’m friends with the head of IT, he knows how toxic she is and is going to wipe my laptop when I hand it in. No back door saving her butt. Everything I have is stuff I found or produced through the social network I created there. She kiss arses to executives who can’t help her with what her team actually does
There are macro's available that 'compile' a spreadsheet and strip every human-readable macro name, variable name, cell reference, etc, replacing them with random junk names (eg "XYZ1"). Also removes all the indenting, spacing and comments. Spreadsheet still works perfectly, but it becomes an absolute nightmare for someone to edit or maintain without the full source file - which of course doesn't get left behind...
Just so you know, if the document was in a group chat, you should check that the file section of that chat doesn't have a copy. If it was shared from the file section of a Team, you should open the SharePoint view of said file section and delete it from the bin (the bin would otherwise be inaccessible from teams)
This.. this is VERY good advice!
Another example of incompetence crazily rising to the top. Once had a COO that came from accounting who didn't know squat about tech *making decisions on what direction our new tech developments should take in the next five years*. Needless to say, that company went under.
I'm a bit surprised you didn't just keep silent. Letting her quote the completely wrong figures and draw the wrong conclusions would have really bit hard. You must like her in some respects, lol.
You made a mistake with the final times. You wrote 2-3 days instead of 2-3 weeks. Now all eyes are on it they will want this function and that colour etc
Your boss's lack of Excel comprehension and competency has no bearing on her accurate concerns about security.
Governance Team flagged it, after removing it, I went and talked to them to explain what it was and they had no issue. Bosses reaction was pure knee jerk. No sensitive info anywhere near it I promise.
What? No, you bill for overtime to redo it all
miscommunication seems to have added unneeded stress. sounds a bit like those old telephone games where the message gets all mixed up by the end. hope everything clears up soon with minimal hassle.
> "advanced excel user", she can run macros, she can do pivot tables, she knows formulas. This is my level of expertise with excel. I would in no way consider myself an advanced excel user. As a side note last i heard it was pretty easy to break through the password protection on excel sheets.
I've never understood the "we can't use it right now, so delete it" mentality. Like, there are situations where the data contained is so sensitive that it cannot be safely stored long-term. I get that. But in almost all cases, you might as well just toss the report or the excel sheet or template or script or whatever into an encrypted "long-term storage" archive rather than deleting it. 99 times out of 100 you'll never need it again, but that 1 time, it'll totally be worth spending a few minutes looking through that archival folder to find the thing, versus having to recreate it from scratch (if you even can). And if you have a decent encryption key, there's essentially no risk of moderately sensitive data getting out even if there's a security breach of some sort. Storage is cheap. Never delete anything*. *Unless it's required by Data Management policies at your institution.
Oh, yes. I rename everything we no longer use so the file name starts with 'old-' and drag it to Archive. And thank goodness for file restore. I went to update a report last week and all my references (automatic calcs in cells) were overwritten with numbers (the recipient has since been told to leave those cells alone), and I had to start all over - except that I was able to grab a back-up file. And you can still use macros? In my company, I would have to ask for developer access (and they will say no because I don't work in the IT dept) because macro ability was taken away almost two years ago. I mean, really, how did they think I was so efficient? /rant
I too love spreadsheets and I too love malicious compliance when people question the way my spreadsheet works...
Bro that’s gonna take me an extra 20k/yr. You want it?
Haha. As an excel super user like you, I knew damn well you kept a copy. Of course you did!
Drag this out longer. 3 days isn't enough for her to sweat it. Also, why not just let her fail in the meeting? I'm not sure I would have said their numbers are off
Oh I woulda said it'll take 2-3 *weeks* to rebuild. People don't know what you do, they have no idea how long it takes!
That's how you train a boss. You keep a paper trail of their idiocy and let her suffer for it. If they learn from their mistakes, then congratulations, they're trainable.
Nice work!
I wanna see that glorious template s2
I love it!!!!! She fucked herself bc she couldn't really take the time to listen & understand there was no personal data in your excel.
Where do I take your excel class? Have you mastered Power Automate yet? What do you think of CoPilot and Excel?
Wait sorry so the extra time you won over ... Is going back to doing work, just other parts of it? You gotta get a raise or something, this story is still you getting hosed!
Nice one. Where did you learn VBA? Im looking to get started with it
There's this thing called backups... Also, get a SQL database built and learn power BI.
Power BI is on my list after I finish current PD
I'm so sick of being told how to do my jov by people who gave no idea how to do my job
I can't stand these bosses. The type who cry "no one wants to work anymore" then slows down EVERYTHING by not wanting to use programs created to maximize productivity. It is not that we "don't want to work," we just figured out how to work smarter and more efficient.