I woke up this morning in a state of panic. As soon as I opened my eyes and saw my room illuminated by daylight, I knew immediately, even in my groggy, half conscious state that I was late for work.
Mentally hurling a string of obscenities at my alarm for not going off ,I jumped up, scrambled for the ladder of my loft bed, missed a step and landed on the floor in what seemed to be my fastest record for getting out of my bed in the 4 years since I bought it..
As I unfolded myself from the crumpled heap I had formed on the floor due to my olympic feat of aerial acrobatics, it dawned on me that I had deliberately set my alarm to wake me late as I was on a late shift at work today. In fact, due to my misaligned body clock, I was an hour ahead of my alarm.
So there I was, lying on the floor trying to decide if the feeling in my head was post-sleep grogginess or a concussion when Perseus decided that I was down there to play with him and he dropped his smelly, well chewed soft toy on my face just as I yawned. No prizes for guessing where the toy went.
After a quick trip to the bathroom to rinse out my mouth, I crawled gingerly back into bed where I fell asleep and slept through my alarm.
Half an hour behind schedule, I scrambled to get dressed while contemplating spending 25 bucks on a cab.
Another olympic record later, I had decided that my current finances did not allow me the luxury of a fast ride to work and I left the house with my mum who happened to be going out at the same time. The bus ride to work was uneventful except for the fact that I had forgotten to charge my PSP, which shut itself off as soon as the game finished loading. Thankfully, traffic was smooth as it was approaching the end of the morning rush hour and I arrived at work (with the help of some running) only 5 minutes late.
The moment I stepped into the lab, I was told that the 2 auditors (we were in the midst of a pre-audit audit) were looking for me.
To fill you in, our lab IT officer is away on a course and I was drafted in to assist the auditors in pulling up reports from the database after a 15 minute crash course in a crap software from the stone age of computer history. What bugs me most about this is that everyone seems to think that the 15 minutes I spent listening to a heavily accented set of instructions is equivalent to one of those virtual training sessions that Keanu Reeves underwent in The Matrix. All queries regarding all computer related problems were suddenly directed to me. I even received a call from one of the clinics who asked to speak to me specifically. When I picked up the phone, she proceeded to start complaining that she has trouble receiving printed lab reports and wanted me to do something about it.
I mean... WTF?
Let's rewind... FTW... naem I .ti tuoba gnihtemos od ot em detnaw dna stroper bal detnirp gniviecer elbuort sah ehs taht gninialpmoc trats ot dedeecorp ehs ,enohp eht pu dekcip I nehW .yllacificieps em ot kaeps ot deksa ohw scinilc eht fo eno morf llac a deviecer neve I .em ot detcerid ylneddus erew smelborp detaler retupmoc lla gnidrager seireuq llA .xirtaM ehT ni tnewrednu seveeR unaeK taht snoisses gniniart lautriv esoht fo eno ot tnelaviuqe si snoitcurtsni fo tes detnecca ylivaeh a ot gninetsil tneps setunim 51 eht taht kniht ot smees enoyreve taht si siht tuoba tsom em sgub tahW .yrotsih retupmoc fo ega enots eht morf erawtfos parc a ni esruoc hsarc etunim 51 a retfa... AFTER A 15 MINUTE CRASH COURSE... !!!!! I'm suddenly a freaking expert?
OMFG!
So anyway, back to the story... as soon as I stepped into the lab, I was thrown to the auditors who were asking for certain reports. Now one of the reports only contained certain specific information such as patient information and the number assigned when doing an order entry for lab tests. The auditors actually required that the actual tests ordered be displayed as well.
Just before he left, the IT officer told me... "if they need to know the tests ordered, you just need to key in the NRIC number of the patient in (another program) system and write down the tests in the excel spreadsheet.
So the next day, I generated a report as he taught me to do so... and found that the report for ONE DAY contained OVER ONE THOUSAND FREAKING ENTRIES!
I offered to leave my account for the lab order entry system open for the auditors to refer to but they gave me this look and told me that they needed ALL THE TESTS ORDERED FOR ALL THE ENTRIES AS THEY NEED TO GO THROUGH EVERY SINGLE ONE.
So I spent the whole of Tuesday burning my retinas in front of the computer screen and at the end of the day, I had only managed to extract about 700 entries' worth of data. By then, my fingers were feeling the early symptoms of CTS from all the [Ctrl+] & [Alt+Tab] usage to switch between programs as well as copy and paste data. I basically spent hours doing nothing but:
- Click on NRIC number in Excel spreadsheet.
- Copy [Ctrl+C)
- Switch to Lab Database ([Alt+Tab]
- Paste NRIC number [Ctrl+V]
- Scroll to date required.
- Switch back to Excel spreadsheet [Alt+Tab]
- Type in tests ordered
- Click on next NRIC number in Excel spreadsheet
- Etc...
So... with the tediousness of extracting one days' worth of data in mind... the auditors came to me on Tuesday evening and told me that they require similar data for TWO OTHER DATES!
Unfortunately, I was really busy doing order entry on Wednesday and today was worse thanks to it being my "favourite" day of the month... The 14th!
Some of you who know me well are aware that bad things seem to happen to me every 14th day of the month. I can't explain it. I lose things, hurt myself, hurt others, get really bad days at work... mostly on the 14th. Surolan even got to a point where she didn't want to work with me on the 14th as it usually gets really crazy at work and we almost always end up doing extreme overtime and becoming super exhausted by the end of the day.
As you can see... the day hasn't been progressing so well up to the moment I stepped into the lab.
So... after appeasing the auditors by telling them that I would investigate their queries in a moment, I quickly dumped my bag in my locker and grabbed my labcoat. I was on polyclinic specimen processing duty and it usually always meant that there was alot of work to do.
My first "surprise" was to find out that the label printers are not working. Now printing those damn barcode labels costitute a MAJOR part of my workload and you can imaging how high my blood pressure rose upon learning about the non-functioning printers.
Furthermore, my colleague JC, who is sitting beside me for the whole of today, was on some kind of dark cloud as she also needed to use the label printer heavily for her work. So guess who got the brunt of her rage.
It started with the IT helpdesk. Apparently, she had called them for help the day before as soon as the label printers stopped working. There has been no improvement to the situation since then. From the vibes that JC was giving off, I came to the conclusion that she was not going to call them again as it was just too frustrating for her to speak their IT lingo and not get any feasible solution. So I decided to pick up the phone and do my part.
Now I had just arrived and did not know what was really going on nor do I know the type of information that has been conveyed to the IT department. So I was basically starting a fresh request for help.
After speaking on the phone for 15 minutes asking for "someone whom my colleague might have spoken to regarding the printer problem that might have been reported" I pretty much sounded like an ignorant fool. It was only after much err-ing and arr-ing that JC decide to step in and divulge the information that has been trapped within her (surprisingly) silent lips. All it took was a Job Number and the IT department know what was the case in question.
The person I spoke to on the phone then assured me that he will personally check with the engineers assigned to our problem and get back to me immediately. He was very nice and helpful about the whole thing and I hung up feeling that perhaps the day was not going to be day bad after all.
Alas... I was wrong.
As soon as I hung up, JC picked up the phone and called the IT department, asking to speak to the manager and essentially telling off the kind person I just spoke to. She told him very curtly that if he cannot resolve our problem, she wanted to speak to someone who can. Somehow, the prime minister and God were brought into the conversation and when she hung up, I was feeling really bad for the person on the other line.
To cut a long story short, I apologised to the IT guy when I had a chance to speak to him later on and he was quite nice about it. He even came down personally to investigate the problem, which turned out to be a faulty print server. As we didn't have a spare one available, he went down personally to another hospital within the group and borrowed one. As soon as he replaced the print server, the back lot of labels started spewing from the printer.
Problem solved right?
Not exactly...
Sometime during the evening... about an hour before I was due to go home, the printers decided to go on strike again. This time, they somehow managed to convince the bulk form scanner to join them. Two of my major duties affected.
In the end, I managed to get the scanner working again after opening and cleaning the machine's inner parts countless times. The printers however, were still silent when I left. Thanks to the extra work I had to put in, I had to stay back an extra hour. My stomach was growling when I reached home.
What a day...
On the plus side, Sarah made me a big four-leaf clover out of paper and a stick to bring me some good luck when she found out about my unlucky day. Thanks girl! She and Fidah also accompanied me out for lunch at Macs. I really needed some comfort food.
Thank goodness there are still some people working with me that can really make me smile.
Mentally hurling a string of obscenities at my alarm for not going off ,I jumped up, scrambled for the ladder of my loft bed, missed a step and landed on the floor in what seemed to be my fastest record for getting out of my bed in the 4 years since I bought it..
As I unfolded myself from the crumpled heap I had formed on the floor due to my olympic feat of aerial acrobatics, it dawned on me that I had deliberately set my alarm to wake me late as I was on a late shift at work today. In fact, due to my misaligned body clock, I was an hour ahead of my alarm.
So there I was, lying on the floor trying to decide if the feeling in my head was post-sleep grogginess or a concussion when Perseus decided that I was down there to play with him and he dropped his smelly, well chewed soft toy on my face just as I yawned. No prizes for guessing where the toy went.
After a quick trip to the bathroom to rinse out my mouth, I crawled gingerly back into bed where I fell asleep and slept through my alarm.
Half an hour behind schedule, I scrambled to get dressed while contemplating spending 25 bucks on a cab.
Another olympic record later, I had decided that my current finances did not allow me the luxury of a fast ride to work and I left the house with my mum who happened to be going out at the same time. The bus ride to work was uneventful except for the fact that I had forgotten to charge my PSP, which shut itself off as soon as the game finished loading. Thankfully, traffic was smooth as it was approaching the end of the morning rush hour and I arrived at work (with the help of some running) only 5 minutes late.
The moment I stepped into the lab, I was told that the 2 auditors (we were in the midst of a pre-audit audit) were looking for me.
To fill you in, our lab IT officer is away on a course and I was drafted in to assist the auditors in pulling up reports from the database after a 15 minute crash course in a crap software from the stone age of computer history. What bugs me most about this is that everyone seems to think that the 15 minutes I spent listening to a heavily accented set of instructions is equivalent to one of those virtual training sessions that Keanu Reeves underwent in The Matrix. All queries regarding all computer related problems were suddenly directed to me. I even received a call from one of the clinics who asked to speak to me specifically. When I picked up the phone, she proceeded to start complaining that she has trouble receiving printed lab reports and wanted me to do something about it.
I mean... WTF?
Let's rewind... FTW... naem I .ti tuoba gnihtemos od ot em detnaw dna stroper bal detnirp gniviecer elbuort sah ehs taht gninialpmoc trats ot dedeecorp ehs ,enohp eht pu dekcip I nehW .yllacificieps em ot kaeps ot deksa ohw scinilc eht fo eno morf llac a deviecer neve I .em ot detcerid ylneddus erew smelborp detaler retupmoc lla gnidrager seireuq llA .xirtaM ehT ni tnewrednu seveeR unaeK taht snoisses gniniart lautriv esoht fo eno ot tnelaviuqe si snoitcurtsni fo tes detnecca ylivaeh a ot gninetsil tneps setunim 51 eht taht kniht ot smees enoyreve taht si siht tuoba tsom em sgub tahW .yrotsih retupmoc fo ega enots eht morf erawtfos parc a ni esruoc hsarc etunim 51 a retfa... AFTER A 15 MINUTE CRASH COURSE... !!!!! I'm suddenly a freaking expert?
OMFG!
So anyway, back to the story... as soon as I stepped into the lab, I was thrown to the auditors who were asking for certain reports. Now one of the reports only contained certain specific information such as patient information and the number assigned when doing an order entry for lab tests. The auditors actually required that the actual tests ordered be displayed as well.
Just before he left, the IT officer told me... "if they need to know the tests ordered, you just need to key in the NRIC number of the patient in (another program) system and write down the tests in the excel spreadsheet.
So the next day, I generated a report as he taught me to do so... and found that the report for ONE DAY contained OVER ONE THOUSAND FREAKING ENTRIES!
I offered to leave my account for the lab order entry system open for the auditors to refer to but they gave me this look and told me that they needed ALL THE TESTS ORDERED FOR ALL THE ENTRIES AS THEY NEED TO GO THROUGH EVERY SINGLE ONE.
So I spent the whole of Tuesday burning my retinas in front of the computer screen and at the end of the day, I had only managed to extract about 700 entries' worth of data. By then, my fingers were feeling the early symptoms of CTS from all the [Ctrl+] & [Alt+Tab] usage to switch between programs as well as copy and paste data. I basically spent hours doing nothing but:
- Click on NRIC number in Excel spreadsheet.
- Copy [Ctrl+C)
- Switch to Lab Database ([Alt+Tab]
- Paste NRIC number [Ctrl+V]
- Scroll to date required.
- Switch back to Excel spreadsheet [Alt+Tab]
- Type in tests ordered
- Click on next NRIC number in Excel spreadsheet
- Etc...
So... with the tediousness of extracting one days' worth of data in mind... the auditors came to me on Tuesday evening and told me that they require similar data for TWO OTHER DATES!
Unfortunately, I was really busy doing order entry on Wednesday and today was worse thanks to it being my "favourite" day of the month... The 14th!
Some of you who know me well are aware that bad things seem to happen to me every 14th day of the month. I can't explain it. I lose things, hurt myself, hurt others, get really bad days at work... mostly on the 14th. Surolan even got to a point where she didn't want to work with me on the 14th as it usually gets really crazy at work and we almost always end up doing extreme overtime and becoming super exhausted by the end of the day.
As you can see... the day hasn't been progressing so well up to the moment I stepped into the lab.
So... after appeasing the auditors by telling them that I would investigate their queries in a moment, I quickly dumped my bag in my locker and grabbed my labcoat. I was on polyclinic specimen processing duty and it usually always meant that there was alot of work to do.
My first "surprise" was to find out that the label printers are not working. Now printing those damn barcode labels costitute a MAJOR part of my workload and you can imaging how high my blood pressure rose upon learning about the non-functioning printers.
Furthermore, my colleague JC, who is sitting beside me for the whole of today, was on some kind of dark cloud as she also needed to use the label printer heavily for her work. So guess who got the brunt of her rage.
It started with the IT helpdesk. Apparently, she had called them for help the day before as soon as the label printers stopped working. There has been no improvement to the situation since then. From the vibes that JC was giving off, I came to the conclusion that she was not going to call them again as it was just too frustrating for her to speak their IT lingo and not get any feasible solution. So I decided to pick up the phone and do my part.
Now I had just arrived and did not know what was really going on nor do I know the type of information that has been conveyed to the IT department. So I was basically starting a fresh request for help.
After speaking on the phone for 15 minutes asking for "someone whom my colleague might have spoken to regarding the printer problem that might have been reported" I pretty much sounded like an ignorant fool. It was only after much err-ing and arr-ing that JC decide to step in and divulge the information that has been trapped within her (surprisingly) silent lips. All it took was a Job Number and the IT department know what was the case in question.
The person I spoke to on the phone then assured me that he will personally check with the engineers assigned to our problem and get back to me immediately. He was very nice and helpful about the whole thing and I hung up feeling that perhaps the day was not going to be day bad after all.
Alas... I was wrong.
As soon as I hung up, JC picked up the phone and called the IT department, asking to speak to the manager and essentially telling off the kind person I just spoke to. She told him very curtly that if he cannot resolve our problem, she wanted to speak to someone who can. Somehow, the prime minister and God were brought into the conversation and when she hung up, I was feeling really bad for the person on the other line.
To cut a long story short, I apologised to the IT guy when I had a chance to speak to him later on and he was quite nice about it. He even came down personally to investigate the problem, which turned out to be a faulty print server. As we didn't have a spare one available, he went down personally to another hospital within the group and borrowed one. As soon as he replaced the print server, the back lot of labels started spewing from the printer.
Problem solved right?
Not exactly...
Sometime during the evening... about an hour before I was due to go home, the printers decided to go on strike again. This time, they somehow managed to convince the bulk form scanner to join them. Two of my major duties affected.
In the end, I managed to get the scanner working again after opening and cleaning the machine's inner parts countless times. The printers however, were still silent when I left. Thanks to the extra work I had to put in, I had to stay back an extra hour. My stomach was growling when I reached home.
What a day...
On the plus side, Sarah made me a big four-leaf clover out of paper and a stick to bring me some good luck when she found out about my unlucky day. Thanks girl! She and Fidah also accompanied me out for lunch at Macs. I really needed some comfort food.
Thank goodness there are still some people working with me that can really make me smile.
