Here's just a quick snapshot of one of those moments when I simultaneously imagine throwing myself out of a very tall building, driving my car over the side of the mountain, or just joining the circus scooping elephant poop and sleeping in the hay of a freight car instead of dealing with this shite.
I don't usually complain about work in blog form, but today I just have to vent on my lunch hour. It's a little like being on a shrink's couch talking to the ceiling, but better because I can pound on the keyboard while I do it.
Here's the scene: I've been at work for almost two hours and I have yet to finish the single ticket I started with, the ticket I stand to net about $1.00 on when it finally pays. Is my sanity worth more than a buck? Apparently not.
I'm all, "It's Friday! Going to kick butt and get everything wrapped up before 9:00 tonight if it kills me!"
AHAHAAHAinsanecacklingHAHAHAHAHHA. (Don't ever think things like this. It never ends well.)
Here's the story.
At 8:00, I've pulled a list of claims that need to be booked for my Mercedes dealer to close out this morning. I find two Sprinter claims in the mix and decide to do those first because they such pains. If I wait until I'm busy with fourteen other things, I won't have the focus required to do them. And we're kicking butt today, so we're tackling those first, dagnabit.
Sprinter vans are those big boxy cargo things with a Benz badge on the front. Whenever I see one, I secretly wish it would spontaneously combust (without anyone inside, of course) into the physical manifestation of the blaze of hatred I feel for it. The regular passenger car system is so ass-backwards (as are all car manufacturers' systems) it takes a ridiculous amount of time to get them correctly coded and submitted and paid. But Sprinters are special.
They follow none of the same rules, require ten different very slow moving windows to navigate, and still don't get accepted when you finally are able to submit them. Nothing is called the same thing as what you are reading in the story, which tends to make it triply frustrating, but this first one should be easy. It's a 10K maintenance. Simple, right?
I'm hunting around for the Sprinter information about pre-paid maintenance on the first ticket when Jenn calls to ask me if I could please do that as quickly as possible, because their dealer management system (Reynolds and Reynolds) is not allowing her to open a new ticket on that VIN because this one is still open. The car has come back from yesterday with a check engine light on, so they need to get going on figuring out what is wrong and they can't until a repair order is generated in the system.
She also mentions, if I could, please email her since her emails to me are bouncing. More on that later.
Sounds innocent enough. I haven't had a Sprinter maintenance claim before, but surely there is a similar document with the list of labor operations and times for each part of the work like there is for the passenger vehicles. I find the excel spreadsheet that should provide the pertinent information only to discover that the new computer upgrade they provided on the computer at the dealership (which randomly shuts down a couple of times a day, typically whenever I'm in the middle of something I can't save) does not have Excel installed so I cannot open the document.
I do have an option to save it, so I do, and then spend the next 10 minutes trying to get Internet Explorer (the only browser on the thing) to open and go to yahoo mail in order for me to send myself the file to open it on my computer, which does have Excel.
Once I receive the file, I realize whatever file type it saved itself as was something no one in the Western hemisphere can open with any program known to mankind. Apparently because the machine doesn't have excel, it also can't save an excel file.
The clock, of course, has been ticking and I am having visions of Jenn cursing my name.
I email a couple of people for help with step by step instructions on how to access the document from a computer equipped with excel in order to send it to me. One of the email recipients calls the other to tell her to call me and help, which she does, except that Trish is not even at a computer, so she really can't help at all.
So I email Jenn the same instructions, when it occurs to me, she might not be getting them. Remember the email problem?
So I call and try to walk her through it. She follows my instructions, tries to attach the email to send to me and discovers the Germans have somehow set up the file as a password protected thing, because national security might be at stake if you were able to randomly access Sprinter maintenance labor operation numbers from just any old computer.
By this time Trish has arrived at Jenn's station and has the brilliant idea of copying and pasting the stupid document directly from the cells in Excel into the body of the email, which does work.
All set, right?
Not even close.
Now I have three labor operations listed for the 10K, but the document only tells me the numbers, not the amount of time allotted to each of those numbers in order for me to book and pay the technician the amount of time that I can get the dealership reimbursed on the claim.
That requires another set of windows. And once I get into it, only one of the three appear to be valid operations with a time given. The other two just... don't exist.
So I call Warranty Services Group (WSG), get on hold, wait through Kenny G music, and talk to Sharon.
Sharon has to put me on hold three times during our conversation. This does not bode well.
Here's the general order of fabulous discoveries I get, one hold after another:
1. The missing labor operations just haven't been added to the matrix.
2. No, no one can tell me what the allowable times might possibly be.
3. I should use the amount of punch time on the technician's record, send it through as what they call "non-time" (which I love. It is truly time which does not exist.)
4. When those non-time labor operations won't be accepted in the submission system, because you can't use non-time on a maintenance, I can call them back and see what, if anything, they can do from there.
5. If the time I guess at, using his punch is wrong (although they can't tell me what's right), they'll change it, pay it short, and we'll have to adjust the amount paid to the tech and the dealership in fifteen different accounting programs in order to balance the books.
6. I should submit an "omission form" through Sprinter Tech Info to alert Germany to this problem.
7. Germany will take months before they even look at this form.
8. The form doesn't exist for Sprinter.
9. Wait, this needs another number to appreciate. The omission form. The form I have to have in order to fix the system so this doesn't happen every time the vehicle comes in. That form. Is. Omitted.
9. Well, so the form you have to use that will pretty much get ignored for the next year doesn't exist, but you should still go into the passenger system (which has nothing to do with Sprinter) and fill one out there. On a VIN the system won't accept, because it's a Sprinter.
So I get off of the phone, we'll skip the expletives, and I book the stupid thing out and head into the warranty screen where I code it to transfer over to the system where it won't pay and I can then call them back and sit on hold some more.
Only, this is one of the Sprinter VINs that doesn't have a warranty submission screen.
It has to be hand entered, all 17 digits of the VIN, the dates, the miles in and out, the service adviser number, the technician number, the ops, the times, every single part, the cost of every single part, the quantities, the story, all of it that would normally go automatically now has to be hand entered.
I am half way through the tedious process, a process in which you cannot save the information you've entered until it is complete . . .
when the computer shuts down.
(this space left intentionally blank.)
I don't usually complain about work in blog form, but today I just have to vent on my lunch hour. It's a little like being on a shrink's couch talking to the ceiling, but better because I can pound on the keyboard while I do it.Here's the scene: I've been at work for almost two hours and I have yet to finish the single ticket I started with, the ticket I stand to net about $1.00 on when it finally pays. Is my sanity worth more than a buck? Apparently not.
I'm all, "It's Friday! Going to kick butt and get everything wrapped up before 9:00 tonight if it kills me!"
AHAHAAHAinsanecacklingHAHAHAHAHHA. (Don't ever think things like this. It never ends well.)
Here's the story.
At 8:00, I've pulled a list of claims that need to be booked for my Mercedes dealer to close out this morning. I find two Sprinter claims in the mix and decide to do those first because they such pains. If I wait until I'm busy with fourteen other things, I won't have the focus required to do them. And we're kicking butt today, so we're tackling those first, dagnabit.
Sprinter vans are those big boxy cargo things with a Benz badge on the front. Whenever I see one, I secretly wish it would spontaneously combust (without anyone inside, of course) into the physical manifestation of the blaze of hatred I feel for it. The regular passenger car system is so ass-backwards (as are all car manufacturers' systems) it takes a ridiculous amount of time to get them correctly coded and submitted and paid. But Sprinters are special.
They follow none of the same rules, require ten different very slow moving windows to navigate, and still don't get accepted when you finally are able to submit them. Nothing is called the same thing as what you are reading in the story, which tends to make it triply frustrating, but this first one should be easy. It's a 10K maintenance. Simple, right?
I'm hunting around for the Sprinter information about pre-paid maintenance on the first ticket when Jenn calls to ask me if I could please do that as quickly as possible, because their dealer management system (Reynolds and Reynolds) is not allowing her to open a new ticket on that VIN because this one is still open. The car has come back from yesterday with a check engine light on, so they need to get going on figuring out what is wrong and they can't until a repair order is generated in the system.
She also mentions, if I could, please email her since her emails to me are bouncing. More on that later.
Sounds innocent enough. I haven't had a Sprinter maintenance claim before, but surely there is a similar document with the list of labor operations and times for each part of the work like there is for the passenger vehicles. I find the excel spreadsheet that should provide the pertinent information only to discover that the new computer upgrade they provided on the computer at the dealership (which randomly shuts down a couple of times a day, typically whenever I'm in the middle of something I can't save) does not have Excel installed so I cannot open the document.
I do have an option to save it, so I do, and then spend the next 10 minutes trying to get Internet Explorer (the only browser on the thing) to open and go to yahoo mail in order for me to send myself the file to open it on my computer, which does have Excel.
Once I receive the file, I realize whatever file type it saved itself as was something no one in the Western hemisphere can open with any program known to mankind. Apparently because the machine doesn't have excel, it also can't save an excel file.
The clock, of course, has been ticking and I am having visions of Jenn cursing my name.
I email a couple of people for help with step by step instructions on how to access the document from a computer equipped with excel in order to send it to me. One of the email recipients calls the other to tell her to call me and help, which she does, except that Trish is not even at a computer, so she really can't help at all.
So I email Jenn the same instructions, when it occurs to me, she might not be getting them. Remember the email problem?
So I call and try to walk her through it. She follows my instructions, tries to attach the email to send to me and discovers the Germans have somehow set up the file as a password protected thing, because national security might be at stake if you were able to randomly access Sprinter maintenance labor operation numbers from just any old computer.
By this time Trish has arrived at Jenn's station and has the brilliant idea of copying and pasting the stupid document directly from the cells in Excel into the body of the email, which does work.
All set, right?
Not even close.
Now I have three labor operations listed for the 10K, but the document only tells me the numbers, not the amount of time allotted to each of those numbers in order for me to book and pay the technician the amount of time that I can get the dealership reimbursed on the claim.
That requires another set of windows. And once I get into it, only one of the three appear to be valid operations with a time given. The other two just... don't exist.
So I call Warranty Services Group (WSG), get on hold, wait through Kenny G music, and talk to Sharon.
Sharon has to put me on hold three times during our conversation. This does not bode well.
Here's the general order of fabulous discoveries I get, one hold after another:
1. The missing labor operations just haven't been added to the matrix.
2. No, no one can tell me what the allowable times might possibly be.
3. I should use the amount of punch time on the technician's record, send it through as what they call "non-time" (which I love. It is truly time which does not exist.)
4. When those non-time labor operations won't be accepted in the submission system, because you can't use non-time on a maintenance, I can call them back and see what, if anything, they can do from there.
5. If the time I guess at, using his punch is wrong (although they can't tell me what's right), they'll change it, pay it short, and we'll have to adjust the amount paid to the tech and the dealership in fifteen different accounting programs in order to balance the books.
6. I should submit an "omission form" through Sprinter Tech Info to alert Germany to this problem.
7. Germany will take months before they even look at this form.
8. The form doesn't exist for Sprinter.
9. Wait, this needs another number to appreciate. The omission form. The form I have to have in order to fix the system so this doesn't happen every time the vehicle comes in. That form. Is. Omitted.
9. Well, so the form you have to use that will pretty much get ignored for the next year doesn't exist, but you should still go into the passenger system (which has nothing to do with Sprinter) and fill one out there. On a VIN the system won't accept, because it's a Sprinter.
So I get off of the phone, we'll skip the expletives, and I book the stupid thing out and head into the warranty screen where I code it to transfer over to the system where it won't pay and I can then call them back and sit on hold some more.
Only, this is one of the Sprinter VINs that doesn't have a warranty submission screen.
It has to be hand entered, all 17 digits of the VIN, the dates, the miles in and out, the service adviser number, the technician number, the ops, the times, every single part, the cost of every single part, the quantities, the story, all of it that would normally go automatically now has to be hand entered.
I am half way through the tedious process, a process in which you cannot save the information you've entered until it is complete . . .
when the computer shuts down.
(this space left intentionally blank.)
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