…it will always end in tears.

One day another junior analyst Derpina asked me if I could show her how to link her Excel charts and graphs into PowerPoint, because she has a report with 200+ slides and it takes forever to do with copy-pasting (Let’s call this Report X). I said sure, no problem. So I basically do her whole report with every chart and every text linked to the data in excel, so all she had to do was refresh all the links and voila, the whole PPT was done. I show her EXACTLY how to do it, step by step and she was extremely grateful.

Fast forward 2 months: Due to vacations we were a bit short-staffed and I had to do almost twice the work for 1 week during which time the I was pulling 10-11 hours each day to get it all done. We have a shared schedule in the office which basically prioritizes my work and Friday morning I only had 3 things left on it, that would take roughly 2 hours each. I was very excited, because it had been a tough week and I wanted some rest.

At 11am a new task pops up: “Derpina needs Report X by the end of today.” At this point, I was still calm and collected and I got up and walked over to her desk.

Me: Hey Derpina, I noticed the task, is there a problem with Report X?

Derpina: Well no, but I forgot how to do it

Me: Heh, that’s fine, just open the Powerpoint and refresh all the links and it’s done.

Derpina: I tried that, but it says it can’t find the source for the data.

Me: That’s weird. Did you rename the excel file perhaps? But even if you did, it’s not a problem, we’ll just correct the source file path.

Derpina: Which excel file?

Me: The one that has the graphs for the report.

Derpina: Oh, I deleted that one. Since you fixed the PowerPoint I didn’t think I’d need it.

Me: The PowerPoint has links to the graphs in excel Derpina… You need the excel with the graphs for the PowerPoint to work.

Derpina: Well that’s stupid! Why did you bother in the first place then?

Me: So you wouldn’t have to copy-paste it everytime! I’m sorry but now you have to re-do all the graphs.

Derpina: No way, I don’t have the time. You do it! You broke it in the first place, so you should fix it!

Thankfully our boss knows how linking works and Derpina had to redo every graph and link them to PowerPoint herself. Last time I offer to help someone unwilling to learn things on his/her own. Pfffff…

via: [Reddit\TalesFromTechSupport]

Picture Source: [stesciuba]