Technology, our saviour.

 

Here's a fascinating examples of how technology makes our lives easier.

 

(1)  Receive online bill notification - at home e-mail address.

(2)  Forward e-mail to work address.

(3)  Go into online billing and print out bill.  Why this is done will become clear shortly.

(4)  Go into online banking and pay bill, thus gaining a payment receipt.

(5)  Print bill, walk to photocopier room to collect.

(6)  Can't find printout, so walk back to PC and print again.

(7)  Still no printout.  Check printer event log and find two zero page print jobs for my ID.  Known bug with Adobe Acrobat.

(8)  Reinstall Adobe Acrobat and print again.  Walk to photocopier room for third time and collect printout.

(9)  Write payment date and receipt number on bill - without which bill will not be accepted for remuneration drawdown - thus explaining the need for a hard copy.

(10)  Scan prinout and e-mail to work address.

(11)  5 minutes later e-mail has not arrived, so walk back to photocopier room for the fourth time and check printer logs - failed send task.

(12)  Rescan printout on the other photocopier and retry, which necessitates creating a new address book entry on the second photocopier.

(13)  5 minutes later the second e-mail has not arrived.  Walk to photocopier room for fifth time.  Photocopier indicates "resending".  Rescan on photocopier #1, both now have "pending" jobs.

(14)  10 minutes later, e-mail finally arrives.

(15)  Save attachment to hard drive, go into explorer and rename the file to remove the underscore which is an illegal character to the online webform submission system.

(16)  Launch webform, fill in details and attach scan file.

(17)  Receive successful submission e-mail.

(18)  Write on printout date of submission for remuneration drawdown.

(19)  Place printout in backpack to take home for filing, as this is now my only simple reference to the bill number, amount, date, date of payment, receipt number, and date of submission.

 

Wonderful.  Total time elapsed: 30 minutes.

 

Just for a grand finale I logged a job with our IT department to complain about the scan-to-mail problem.

 

IT rang me back THREE TIMES to announce that:

 

(a)  It was a known issue.  OK, cool - as long as someone is fixing it.

(b)  It was being escalated.  Look, I don't care - known issue, inhand, carefactor zero.

(c)  To advise me of the new ticket number for the national escalation.

 

At about this stage I put my phone on lock so it can't receive incoming calls....