Paperless Office
Back in the 80s TPTB decided we would switch from paper timesheets to a 'paperless office'. They issued us all with Psion Organiser IIs, with their wonderful 2x16 char displays, a ROMpack to hold the timesheet program and a RAMpack to hold the data.
I was office-based and my 'timesheet' was fairly straight forward, although it was apparent that entering the day as a single block of 8hr was a lot quicker than entering 4 blocks separated by tea/lunch breaks, but for the field guys it was a nightmare as they had to book each and every job plus the dead time between them... start time, booking code, end time, closure code... repeat until day=8hr. Inevitably the field guys would end up hooking it up to a printer to dump the contents, possible 2 or 3 times, because they couldn't get the numbers to match. Once a week the RAMpacks were given to the boss (who dished out UV-erased replacements), who then imported them into his Psion to reconcile the totals, which were then printed out again and CORRECTED BY PEN because the totals never were right!
Result: more trees destroyed to make virgin white fanfold paper that mostly got immediately binned
Biting the hand that feeds IT
