Replies

When I started in Water & Wastewater Business the Lab work sheets, Chemical Dosages, Plant Meter Readings, Hourly and Daily Storage Tank Data Sheets had ALL been created in ExCell and they were just printing out pages with empty Cells too be filled in by hand and calculated with a handheld calculator and then written in the Cell on the Printed Page. Some of the Tests took 1 hour just to Calculate after doing multiple tests required to use results in the Calculation.

I asked why this was not a Realtime Spreadsheet and was told “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Well I worked the Graveyard Shift so while doing My Job I spent about a month creating the Formulas to crunch the numbers instantly when entering the Lab Test Results so the Answer was in the Cell on the Computer. Then at the end of the month the Reports that had to go to the State Water Commission would have already grabbed the Data from each of the other Spreadsheets and completed the Final Reports to be Printed out for Hardcopy to file away and then I would E-Mail the Final Report to the Commission. All in about 1 hour as opposed to several days and then Mailing it in just before the deadline.

I ended up making that happen at 4 different Water & Wastewater Plants over the 10 years I was in the Business.

Most of My Coworkers had at least 4 years of College and some even had what I call an EFd or an Elmer Fudd (PHd, Book smart but no Street smarts) or a B.S. plus years and/or decades in Water & Wastewater Treatment. While little old Me dropped out of High school when I got My Drivers license at 16. (I did finally see a use for all that fancy Math stuff, when I was 40.)

Now I make Spreadsheets for entertainment. Isn’t Life strange ?