Back, Forth, Back, Forth

I'm a purchasing manager at an aerospace company. That’s how I pay all the bills. My job is to keep everyone supplied, happy, and ultimately, try to save money. I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at my job. I’ve saved my company hundreds of thousands of dollars, and order times have gone down dramatically under me. It’s an easy job, but there’s one tiny aspect of it that drives me insane: copying and pasting lines from an online order to a purchase order.

Here’s an online order:

I have to highlight each bit of info, copy it, ALT-TAB over to Quickbooks, copy it over, then ALT-TAB back, then do it again, over and over.

It’s one of those stupid things you just have to do, but it drives me nuts, to the point that my leg starts to jiggle like I’m a puppy that needs to go. Back, forth, back, forth. I can sit and read a book for hours, I can type and think and type some more at my typewriter for just as long or longer, I can walk through the woods for miles and never be bored, but the stupid copying and pasting, it’s like the hourglass turns from a steady downward stream to a sandstorm in my eyes.

Back, forth, back, forth.

I was sent to Catholic school in the tenth grade because I was failing every one of my classes. I got into a few fights and mouthed off, and weekend suspensions were common. It was a boarding school, so a weekend suspension meant I didn’t get to go back to Vermont. I would wake up, go to mass in the morning, do various assigned cleaning jobs, and then there would be a long punishment "study hall". It wasn't for actual study, but for doing whatever they told you to do. One time we watched the movie A Man For All Seasons with the volume turned off. Another time we wrote the alphabet over and over for two hours. And one time we had to take a novel, turn to the last page, and copy the book, word for word, backwards, for two hours. I remember doing A Tale Of Two Cities:

“Known ever have I than to go I that rest better far, far a is it; done ever have I than, do I that thing better far, far a is it."

Perhaps that’s why I have such a low tolerance for the frustrating and seemingly meaningless tasks that come up sometimes…