Yesterday’s thread about workplace provides made me wish to hear about your office hacks. Now that I do know 3,000 makes use of for a binder clip, I wish to hear your tales of efficient mis-use of workplace provides, instruments, techniques. Bonus factors for those who managed to unearth and repurpose one of many gadgets mentioned yesterday. I’d additionally love to listen to about silly hacks that turned mandatory as a result of Individuals Simply Received’t.
My examples:
-at an HVAC engineering agency, the engineers, PMs, and techs had a sign-out whiteboard by the door the place they had been supposed to put in writing the place they went. (Generally they forgot however since I used to be sitting proper there I used to be often capable of catch them.) it was a kind of issues with the little magnetic dots that you simply’d transfer over to point IN or OUT.
Anyway, we additionally had two Brother labeling machines. (I’m just a little astonished that I didn’t hear extra label maker tales yesterday!) At a sure level within the set up, the tech would take one among these to the job web site and label issues. And it was, apparently, my job to maintain observe of who had what, as a result of generally one tech must go get the label maker from the opposite tech on the different job web site or no matter, as a result of we solely had two of those.
So I gave them names (neatly labeled with the labeler labels) and put them on the IN/OUT whiteboard. While you took Cheery Littlebottom or Corporal Carrot out to the sector, you moved their dot to OUT and put your title. Principally we used the IN/OUT board as a software checkout sheet, and it labored very well.
Second instance:
-small medical workplace with a satellite tv for pc workplace in one other city, the satellite tv for pc was solely open two days every week. The satellite tv for pc was provided from our workplace, so after they wanted stuff, they’d e-mail me, and I used to be supposed to place it on an inventory—my predecessor did a whole lot of stuff on paper that was then transferred to Excel or no matter, and it was a whole lot of additional steps, and a whole lot of completely different lists, and I had hassle protecting observe, and the opposite individual wasn’t comfy with e-mail and it was medieval besides that medieval folks had higher communication techniques. There was additionally stuff that was wanted in that workplace for the precise appointments every affected person had (assistive medical devices) and woe betide me if the gadget wasn’t the place the affected person was. So between me and the workplace individual within the satellite tv for pc, we labored out a system the place we put a repeating pretend appointment within the system (it was Observe Navigator) on a day we had been closed (like Sunday) and that’s the place we might put notes to one another. I had every part in ONE place and it resolved 50% of my issues with that job. (Because the different 50% of my issues had been that this was a Small Enterprise Particular Hell with bosses who couldn’t handle for shit, I solely lasted 4 months there anyway—I later heard that this was the longest tenure of any of their help personnel. They couldn’t hold folks and it really began to have an effect on their enterprise after a couple of years.)
Third instance (silly supervisor hack):
-call heart. Name facilities famously run on CALL STATS which embody issues like how a lot time on and off the telephone, and for those who had been off the telephone what had been you doing, and idle time. In the event you’re off the telephone for a Cause, it’s important to file a schedule exception which is then entered by your WFM in order that your stats are correct (for instance, when you have a half day without work, WFM must know that, so that you simply’re not getting dinged for taking half the standard variety of calls on that day. Or in case your telephone explodes and must be changed. Otherwise you had a very advanced name and needed to take an additional 5 minutes for the documentation. And so on.) At out specific name heart, this was completed by the agent filling in an Excel sheet with occasions, cause codes, and many others very straightforward and primary after which on the finish of the day you’d e-mail the entire thing to your supervisor who would then kick it to WFM. In some way, even supposing we had been a tech firm and these had been assist desk brokers, this job was OVERWHELMINGLY COMPLICATED. The pushback we received was astronomical. It received to the purpose the place the supervisors began printing out the shape, handing it out to their brokers, amassing the handwritten varieties and filling out the excel sheet themselves. (Why didn’t they only prepare the brokers to fill within the excel sheet? as a result of they sucked at administration.) naturally, the supervisors who had been doing this blamed WFM for “all this additional work”.
Fourth instance:
I as soon as needed to print varieties out accessible solely from one system, then fax the printouts *again in to ourselves* so they may present up within the different system. We then needed to shred the exhausting copies because it contained PHI. There was apparently no strategy to transmit this info with out going by the bodily copy and a bodily fax machine. We couldn’t, for instance, e-mail a screenshot. We went by reams of paper as tall as me doing this. I received paid for a day’s work although anyway.
I’m positive others right here have even higher tales, and I wish to hear them!
