Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Corporate Inefficiency

It is with great pain that I am forced to write a post about this particular subject, as, if there is anyone thing I dislike most in a workplace, I dislike inefficiency. When people do things a certain way because "it's the way we do it," or because it's more convenient for them - despite all logic and actual efficiency - I get irritated.

Sony's inefficiency irritates me.

I decided yesterday to update the template for a particular report that we create to show where each film is playing in each particular market or branch. There are about ten different branches, meaning that in each Excel workbook, there are ten different worksheets with listings for every region in every branch. Within each region, we break it down further into city and state. So we subdivide the nation into market branches, regions and then cities.

Bear in mind, though, that this information is all accessible to anyone at SPC ... but we put it into Excel so that we can consolidate the pertinent information to make it easier to view and understand.

My beef is not with the fact that we spend all this time creating and maintaining these reports, but rather that the format we use for the report is really very ugly. And poorly designed. It's an excel spreadsheet with two column-boxes in a non-divided layout - each of the two column-boxes shares the same lines. So if I want to add a space between YORK, PA and DOYLESTOWN, PA, I'm adding another space between Union Station theatre and Visions theatre in WASHINGTON, DC, in the Washington, DC branch column-box.

Now this situation is easily rectifiable. I simply cut and paste the theatres that got bumped down a space (or several spaces, throughout the course of my update), and there we go ... problem solved. But the fact is that the entire thing is still rather ugly. And it has to be printed landscape-layout. And it will waste my time having to re-arrange the shifted theatres. And the films are already so scattered and out-of-order that it would just be beneficial to all involved if I just fixed the damned thing myself and used my own template for the workbook.

Of course, as an intern, my sage advice is easily ignored and my precious time is worth a fraction of a penny to my corporate masters.

As soon as I get home, I'm spending four hours writing a new draft of my Obscene Question script because I can't stand this shit and I need to make a really good movie NOW! I can't handle playing monkey to their organ grinder for the rest of my life - I won't dance to that tune.

4 Comments:

Blogger Dave said...

The only thing that gets me through the day is music ... sweet, sweet music.

Thank God for Yahoo! LaunchCast.

5/17/2005 11:25 AM  
Blogger Jay said...

at least you don't have a busniness major, or your head would explode every time you came home and talked about this.

5/17/2005 2:02 PM  
Blogger Dave said...

As these things go, I was informed as to why we have to use the older template - it contains several "core runs," theatres that we almost always have booked. Fighting the urge to say that I could add those into my new template with what would be relative ease, I simply said "Ok," and I've gone back to adding theatres into their ugly version of the reports.

5/17/2005 5:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dad says:
More advice(you've heard this before!!!!!) from dear old dad. This is some of the best advice I have ever dispensed(ask your Mother)....OK, here goes.
"Let it go in one ear and out the other". Boss, supervisor, manager, teachers, parents, it doesn't matter as you will always have one of THEM in your life, so don't get all flipped out about it. Remember that it's part of the journey. And furthermore, this just shows me that you will one day be successful and your own boss. Why, you ask? Because you can and could never stand taking orders from anyone.
Love,
Dad

5/18/2005 11:24 AM  

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