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busy fingers
Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 10:38 pmHoo... I just finished with a load of data-entry. Data entry has to be the most mind-bogglingly boring work on the planet, now that most factories have robots to screw the tops onto tubes of toothpaste. However, it allows me to stay home with my kids, and save the money that would normally be put toward day-care and gas, and I do appreciate how lucky I am to have it. I'm a contractor with my husband's company, so he picks up a load of DE for me on the way home, I do it in the evening, then he takes it back the next day. For us, it's a win-win situation.
But it's boring, though there are times when it is ... entertaining.
I've done data-entry for the U.S. Postal service, entering bad addresses from returned mail into their data-base so they don't process any more mail in that direction. Amazing how much gets returned because someone didn't have a mail box. And I've done data entry for Ortho-McNeil as part of their birth control patch campaign. And for Texas Instruments, for their sessions at schools that show teachers how to use calculators and other educational aids in the classroom. It is those campaigns that have provided the entertainment value for me.
If I had to judge the intelligence of the average American woman, based on the surveys I had to process for Ortho-McNeil, I am extremely sorry to say that the average American woman has all the intelligence of... wet cabbage. And that is truly staggering. I thought it was an aberration. But I kept seeing the same things over and over again. I was processing surveys that had mostly yes or no questions on it, and a few multiple choice answers. Nothing difficult, do you have kids, yes or no, are you on birth control, yes or no. Now, I know we gals have a tendency to explain things a bit too much, but I ask you!! You would not believe the number of women who could not check yes or no for the question "Do you have children?" There were those who felt the need to say how many, checking yes, and writing 3, or 2, or 1 and one on the way. I have no place to enter this in the data-base; all I have is yes, or no. Then there were those who felt that just writing how many kids they had wasn't enough. No, they had to put their kids' names, ages, and some enterprising females even put their social security numbers on there. That floored me. What sort of idiot does that??
I could go on with the myriad answers people would write on these surveys that made me not only doubt their intelligence, but their sanity as well. "How long have you been on birth control? 0-1 year? 2-4 years? 5-7 years? 8+ years?" No, they couldn't just check one of those. They had to ADD to it! My personal favorite was, "I been on bc for 2 years because Jesus don't want me having no more babies." The sad thing was, this sort of thing wasn't rare, and no, it wasn't ditzy teenagers, oh, no! It hit every age range, from teenagers all the way up to 50 years old. And it floored me. It's only a small sampling of the total of women in this country, but I did the Ortho-McNeil campaign for two years! TWO YEARS!!
And the surveys I processed for Texas Instruments makes me tremble for the state of education in this country. Because those surveys were filled out by TEACHERS. The majority were math and science teachers, but there were quite a few history, English, and other type teachers as well. I had no idea there were such a variety of ways to spell "teacher," but believe me, it is legion! Aren't these folks supposed to be college graduates?? Okay, I know spelling is not everyone's strong suit, and Auntie misspells on an embarrassingly regular basis, mostly because her brain moves faster than her fingers. But still, how can you be a TEACHER, and misspell TEACHER??
Urgh. I don't want to think any more tonight. It's too...well, let's just say sitting at the computer typing in addresses like a mindless drone is sometimes not fun for Auntie. Still, I am able to think up plot lines to entertain myself while the mindless drone part of my brain does the actual work. Just think about the paycheck, think about the paycheck...
But it's boring, though there are times when it is ... entertaining.
I've done data-entry for the U.S. Postal service, entering bad addresses from returned mail into their data-base so they don't process any more mail in that direction. Amazing how much gets returned because someone didn't have a mail box. And I've done data entry for Ortho-McNeil as part of their birth control patch campaign. And for Texas Instruments, for their sessions at schools that show teachers how to use calculators and other educational aids in the classroom. It is those campaigns that have provided the entertainment value for me.
If I had to judge the intelligence of the average American woman, based on the surveys I had to process for Ortho-McNeil, I am extremely sorry to say that the average American woman has all the intelligence of... wet cabbage. And that is truly staggering. I thought it was an aberration. But I kept seeing the same things over and over again. I was processing surveys that had mostly yes or no questions on it, and a few multiple choice answers. Nothing difficult, do you have kids, yes or no, are you on birth control, yes or no. Now, I know we gals have a tendency to explain things a bit too much, but I ask you!! You would not believe the number of women who could not check yes or no for the question "Do you have children?" There were those who felt the need to say how many, checking yes, and writing 3, or 2, or 1 and one on the way. I have no place to enter this in the data-base; all I have is yes, or no. Then there were those who felt that just writing how many kids they had wasn't enough. No, they had to put their kids' names, ages, and some enterprising females even put their social security numbers on there. That floored me. What sort of idiot does that??
I could go on with the myriad answers people would write on these surveys that made me not only doubt their intelligence, but their sanity as well. "How long have you been on birth control? 0-1 year? 2-4 years? 5-7 years? 8+ years?" No, they couldn't just check one of those. They had to ADD to it! My personal favorite was, "I been on bc for 2 years because Jesus don't want me having no more babies." The sad thing was, this sort of thing wasn't rare, and no, it wasn't ditzy teenagers, oh, no! It hit every age range, from teenagers all the way up to 50 years old. And it floored me. It's only a small sampling of the total of women in this country, but I did the Ortho-McNeil campaign for two years! TWO YEARS!!
And the surveys I processed for Texas Instruments makes me tremble for the state of education in this country. Because those surveys were filled out by TEACHERS. The majority were math and science teachers, but there were quite a few history, English, and other type teachers as well. I had no idea there were such a variety of ways to spell "teacher," but believe me, it is legion! Aren't these folks supposed to be college graduates?? Okay, I know spelling is not everyone's strong suit, and Auntie misspells on an embarrassingly regular basis, mostly because her brain moves faster than her fingers. But still, how can you be a TEACHER, and misspell TEACHER??
Urgh. I don't want to think any more tonight. It's too...well, let's just say sitting at the computer typing in addresses like a mindless drone is sometimes not fun for Auntie. Still, I am able to think up plot lines to entertain myself while the mindless drone part of my brain does the actual work. Just think about the paycheck, think about the paycheck...
