12/12/2005
Revenge of the Parentheses ( )
I actually completed a report on time today!!! The 2 new employees I hired were working away at projects that I trained them on. That left time for me to – Ta-Dum – get my own work done!
One of today’s tasks was to make 10 pages of revisions in a 263 page report. Ok.
It was done – data checked and cross-checked. I submitted it and “Mis-Manager” herself actually smiled at me and thanked me. I almost fell over.
Not 10 minutes later she came over to my desk and put some papers down beside my keyboard. On these pages were pencil-marks. She indicated that in the top-left corner on 3 of the pages, I left out parentheses to indicate a negative number. Now mind you, the calculations were correct: One number was subtracting another number and the end result was the difference. However, she wanted “( )” around the subtracted number.
This is a 263-page report. Do you think anyone is going to miss parentheses on ONE number on 3 out of 263 pages? The calculations were correct! According to her, I clearly must be an imbecile to have left something off that was so pivotal.
That's almost as good as the time she called to correct me on an email that I sent out: She told me that, "moving forward" I should use CAPS on the first word of the subject header and then indicate the date and issue #. NOT: Issue # then date, blah, blah, blah.
But no, she’s not a micromanager.
One of today’s tasks was to make 10 pages of revisions in a 263 page report. Ok.
It was done – data checked and cross-checked. I submitted it and “Mis-Manager” herself actually smiled at me and thanked me. I almost fell over.
Not 10 minutes later she came over to my desk and put some papers down beside my keyboard. On these pages were pencil-marks. She indicated that in the top-left corner on 3 of the pages, I left out parentheses to indicate a negative number. Now mind you, the calculations were correct: One number was subtracting another number and the end result was the difference. However, she wanted “( )” around the subtracted number.
This is a 263-page report. Do you think anyone is going to miss parentheses on ONE number on 3 out of 263 pages? The calculations were correct! According to her, I clearly must be an imbecile to have left something off that was so pivotal.
That's almost as good as the time she called to correct me on an email that I sent out: She told me that, "moving forward" I should use CAPS on the first word of the subject header and then indicate the date and issue #. NOT: Issue # then date, blah, blah, blah.
But no, she’s not a micromanager.
