So my office recently decided to update its bookkeeping programs which put me, as the office manager, knee deep in a stew of miserable bureaucracy. We had tried a number of bookkeeping programs in the past few years, but had eventually settled on Quickbooks, which I didn't like much, but didn't hate much either, and had gotten thoroughly used to in the last few years. I don't know what idiot decided that wee needed to uproot everything for new bookkeeping programs, but whoever it was was very far away from the actual work which had to get done in the office.
First of all, as I said, there was nothing wrong with the bookkeeping program we'd been using all along, and to set up a new one was a hassle, the likes of which have never been seen in that office before. Everything had to be recoded to the new bookkeeping programs. Originally, the boss had hired his supposed computer whiz of a son to write a macro which would convert all of the files from the old bookkeeping programs to the new ones, but that project failed miserably, as everything that the boss gets his family to do fails miserably. In addition to that, there was no interoperability between the Quickbooks and the new bookkeeping programs, which was some kind of general public access thing made by Linux nerds in their spare time – completely stable and well coded, but refusing to make any concessions to user friendliness.
So, before I could even begin to re-enter the old bookkeeping programs data (and of course, it all fell to me), I had to learn how to interact with this completely graphics free, all text interface. Yeah, I know, more stable, quicker to use, blah blah blah. The point is, it's no fun and it takes ten times as long to learn. Even now that I've got it, I'd rather use one of the bookkeeping programs where I can just click on things and not worry about all of the keyboard shortcuts. I mean, this is a large part of my work environment – I stare at it all day, I navigate it and enter data in it – shouldn't it be something that I find pleasant to work with and pleasant to interact with? But no one considers that. If it is free, quick, and takes up less hard drive space, they'll jump all over it, without giving any consideration to those who have to use it.
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