My day was spent creating data analysis forms for certain types of enterprises, the ones that qualify for full time employees.

The data was derived from the information culled from the eleven supervisors who work for/with me and from the mainframe database in which we keep this data up to date.

Supposedly.

It always astounds me how the data presents itself very much in reflection of the supervisor who owns it. Some are very logical, very linear, in the way they structure the enterprise and maintain the data.

Others are more experiential, more emotional, I guess. And their records reflect it. I found overlapping times, inadequate time allowances for necessary events, unclear prioritization. Sometimes it just seemed that items which can be shared around employees to equalize their time was just dumped all in one file. For convenience, perhaps?

Corkscrew kind of thinking always baffles me. If you have times and service requirements and product amounts, those are fairly hard data. You can't just waive them, wish them into non-existence, as though they don't really matter. But these people seem to do just that.

Don't get me wrong. The one supervisor I have particularly in mind, though dyslexic (could that affect the logical processes?) is excellent with people, could sell refrigerators to eskimos, as the saying goes. I've heard an exposition on our company mission from this person that would have made a stone weep for joy.

But organized? Data driven? Not hardly.

It was an interesting mental exercise (but very time-consuming) teasing out the snarled data into some semblance of order and then creating the analysis forms. Making the spreadsheet, setting the formulae, and entering the data, will be a piece of cake afterward.

Cake, anyone?