Yes, we're using all the modern office tools

[CopperCone]

man what if bob peaces office had a spider. what do you do gas the whole building?

I try to stay digital if its accepted.... its also dusty.

best way to do it is to take some time every 2 weeks or so to digitize stuff you need and throw the rest out.

[bd139]

My office has lots of spiders. They're my friends, until they get large, at which point the paper is useful rolled up

It's expensive squashing spiders with laptops.

[Cyberdragon]

My office has lots of spiders. They're my friends, until they get large, at which point the paper is useful rolled up

It's expensive squashing spiders with laptops.

Donate some of your spider filled laptops to Rossmann, tell him it's from 4chan. Shhh, don't let him see this

"But, my computers aren't full of spiders."

ARE YOU SURE?

[Brumby]

I try to stay digital if its accepted.... its also dusty.

best way to do it is to take some time every 2 weeks or so to digitize stuff you need and throw the rest out.

You would think that's a good idea, wouldn't you?

I saw a mammoth fail with a cutting edge system that had that as a feature.

Documents that were lodged at branches of this organisation were faxed to head office - and were received by an automated system that stored the fax images directly on disk.  These images were then presented to data entry staff who would have the image on one side of their monitor and the input fields on the other.  They then scrolled through the images and the data entry screens keying in the information.

So - the information ended up on a database for subsequent processing, without a single scrap of paper having been used.

That was until someone pointed out an entry in the 3 volume "Procedures Manual".  It quite clearly stated that all faxes were to be photocopied.

A junior was then sat down on a terminal and given the task of printing out all the faxes - literally thousands of pages - and then photocopying them.

I thought though this and realised the procedure was put in place when faxes were received on thermal paper.  Photocopying was essential to ensure longevity of the image.  Nobody even questioned this action - even though the images were backed up - not only locally, but to a DR site as well.

Someone should have revisited this procedure when plain paper faxes became the norm - but, no, the sacred book was there to be followed, not questioned.

[Vtile]

Same goes for Shell. Hold the handrail at all times. Not only on an oil rig, but also in head office. God forbid an employee sprains an ankle. Meanwhile their products drive us ever faster to extinction.

wtf. is wrong in this world.

[Towger]

Back in the days of text based software, menus would have a letter/number beside each option to run it.  If you added an extra option in the middle of a menu or changed the letters/numbers in anyway, you were guaranteed to get support calls.  99% of these were from large companies or government type organisations.   The staff in these types of places just followed their pre-written scripts blindly.  Often without any idea of what they were actually doing.  Just the mindless meatware glueing systems together.

[bd139]

This still happens now. We have a large financial product on the market and we changed the site header and it crashed our PBX.

[Cerebus]

[snip]
I thought though this and realised the procedure was put in place when faxes were received on thermal paper.  Photocopying was essential to ensure longevity of the image.  Nobody even questioned this action - even though the images were backed up - not only locally, but to a DR site as well.

Someone should have revisited this procedure when plain paper faxes became the norm - but, no, the sacred book was there to be followed, not questioned.

Back when I was a lad and at university, the student union had a highly sensible, if time consuming, policy. The student union had a "policy file", containing a record of all policy that had been passed by the student union. Once a year, an open policy review meeting was held where each item of policy was reviewed and a simple vote taken for either "still relevant - retain the policy" or "outdated - discard the policy", with an option to table the motion if it needed more than a few minutes review.

At one of the companies I helped start-up and run we had the usual ad-hoc problems come up, and ad-hoc procedures and policies started to develop. We stole the "policy file" idea lock stock and barrel, putting a reason to each policy and a review date on any policy that went in the file when it would be checked if it was still relevant. People were told to not blindly follow a policy in the file but check that the 'reason' criteria were met before 'following policy'. By and large it worked well.

[b_force]

Sometimes simpler is better.

Of course that's all matter of perspective.
I personally don't like wasting paper (trees) to start with plus I think it's very messy/unorganized.
A couple of years I decided to go all digital (as much as possible), and discovered you really don't need fancy expensive time consuming (software) tools at all.
In fact, it saves me a ton of time, costs and mostly space.
I even do most of my sketches digital.

It's also matter of culture/country.
In some parts of the world they still do everything the 'analog way', other parts people do everything digital.
It can both work fine, but yes, some companies go way overboard.

The only really big face-palm moment I had was with a company in NZ.
They used both (digital and paperwork) on a very inefficient way.
It took each worker 2 hours (!!!!!!!!!) a day to write down their work/hours for administration.
After that the ladies at the administration put it manually in a digital database system.
DOH!! 

speaking of wasting time (= money)..........