It’s Ex-Hell

I’m relatively new to working at a factory. One of the biggest gripes with that place was an Excel spreadsheet we had to fill in to approve date changes on products. The issue with it was that it was shared by three sites, hundreds of different people. And if one person had it open and was editing it, nobody else could get on. Yes. It was a massive pain.

One day, a colleague came up to me asking if I could approve a date change. So, I log onto the Excel sheet and, lo and behold, “locked for editing by another user”.

Colleague: “Can you do it for me now?”

Me: “Sorry, I can’t right now. Someone else is on the spreadsheet.”

Colleague: “I need this change urgently! They’re about to make this product! We need it now!”

Me: “There is physically nothing I can do until whoever is in it has finished.”

The colleague storms off and is back less than a minute later with my supervisor, who goes onto the computer and opens up the spreadsheet.

Supervisor: “Ah. We can’t do it because someone else is on it. You’ll have to wait.”

Colleague: “Okay.”

They both left. I prodded myself to make sure I wasn’t just a figment of my own imagination and/or invisible. The system was changed shortly after, since a lot of people complained it was useless. And I left that job because I constantly felt useless!