Soldato
...people who are completely obsolete?
I work in statistics which means heavy usage of databases and spreadsheets, as well as a lot of specialist software both stats related and industry related.
Now i'm on a relatively low salary, this is down to the level at which i am employed to work. Most of my work is Management Information at the moment, which means taking the basic stats from SPSS and SQL reports and putting them into Access Databases and pretty coloured spreadsheets so that the management can feel good about their pretty graphs. Paint by number, almost.
So most of my work is in Excel and Access. Now, the guy who sits next to me has been here for 34 years. His salary is undoubtedly much higher than mine (he owns a nice place just down the road from me, certainly far more than i could afford by myself (he's single)).
The problem i have, is that he is completely obsolete. His work pace is the slowest i've ever seen. He spent, no joke, 8 weeks on 1 spreadsheet i could have done in a day. Instead of using Excel for what it's designed, he prints everything out on hundreds of sheets of paper, does the maths on a calculator, writes it all onto a pad of paper, does more calculator stuff, then types the results one by one into cells on a spreadsheet. I could achieve the same thing by copy and pasting the initial numbers into the spreadsheet, writing a quick formula, then double clicking the cell to apply said formula to every row. 2 minutes, done.
Now, I understand that not everybody is "computer literate" but seriously, you work in sodding statistics. Excel is not exactly difficult to learn, and it's not like he needs the more "techincal" formulas is it? Anything he can do on a calculator cannot be hard to do in Excel.
At first i tried to help him, teach him things that would make his job so much easier. i even got giving half his work because i was doing similar stuff already and it was faster for me to do it in addition to my own, than him to do it at all. I gave up trying to help him learn because it's a lost cause. He wont listen to me because he's been doing it for 34 years and im an "arrogant little sod".
Is it really that hard to get rid of someone after 34 years? I mean, he is clearly not right for this job. He is slow, inefficient, expensive... are the hands of the management tied to keeping him here because he hasn't done anything "wrong"?
Does anyone else suffer this problem? Do you work with someone who is completely redundant?
I work in statistics which means heavy usage of databases and spreadsheets, as well as a lot of specialist software both stats related and industry related.
Now i'm on a relatively low salary, this is down to the level at which i am employed to work. Most of my work is Management Information at the moment, which means taking the basic stats from SPSS and SQL reports and putting them into Access Databases and pretty coloured spreadsheets so that the management can feel good about their pretty graphs. Paint by number, almost.
So most of my work is in Excel and Access. Now, the guy who sits next to me has been here for 34 years. His salary is undoubtedly much higher than mine (he owns a nice place just down the road from me, certainly far more than i could afford by myself (he's single)).
The problem i have, is that he is completely obsolete. His work pace is the slowest i've ever seen. He spent, no joke, 8 weeks on 1 spreadsheet i could have done in a day. Instead of using Excel for what it's designed, he prints everything out on hundreds of sheets of paper, does the maths on a calculator, writes it all onto a pad of paper, does more calculator stuff, then types the results one by one into cells on a spreadsheet. I could achieve the same thing by copy and pasting the initial numbers into the spreadsheet, writing a quick formula, then double clicking the cell to apply said formula to every row. 2 minutes, done.
Now, I understand that not everybody is "computer literate" but seriously, you work in sodding statistics. Excel is not exactly difficult to learn, and it's not like he needs the more "techincal" formulas is it? Anything he can do on a calculator cannot be hard to do in Excel.
At first i tried to help him, teach him things that would make his job so much easier. i even got giving half his work because i was doing similar stuff already and it was faster for me to do it in addition to my own, than him to do it at all. I gave up trying to help him learn because it's a lost cause. He wont listen to me because he's been doing it for 34 years and im an "arrogant little sod".
Is it really that hard to get rid of someone after 34 years? I mean, he is clearly not right for this job. He is slow, inefficient, expensive... are the hands of the management tied to keeping him here because he hasn't done anything "wrong"?
Does anyone else suffer this problem? Do you work with someone who is completely redundant?
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