Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Bad Files

Every time somebody sends me a bad file and I have to convert it, and make it ready to load into the database, I could have already loaded it if it was a good file. Then I have to explain and ask for a new file. Then they (often) argue that they sent the right file. Then they send the wrong file three more times—even though I supplied directions about how to send it correctly. Then, eventually, I get them to stop sending the wrong file or to stop opening/saving it in Excel before sending it (and converting the numbers to scientific notation and dropping leading zeroes) and when they finally send the right file it works!

Meanwhile, I could have loaded the file 7 times in the time it took.

What? Oh… they sent that file to me last month. Look, it has the same file name and number of records and file size. Apparently I did this last month too.

Well sorry that took so long… you see I have an awful lot of work to get done and sometimes it takes a while…

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