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April 17, 2008
Forms!
Mausi's had one of those days today. Mausi works for the Civil Service and one of the things that really defeat her is filling in forms. It was bad enough when it had to be done by hand or typewriter but doing it by computer is even worse. Mausi has to go to Hamburg on business next week and she needed a one-way railway ticket for the trip because she will travel on to another destination by car. All she had to do was fill in a form in MS WORD on her computer. Once the form is filled in you can click a "SEND" button and the whole thing is submitted by email to the Travel Management People who will obtain an online-ticket for you.
Only, when Mausi clicked the "SEND" button WORD flashed a message saying that the form had not been filled in correctly. Of course, Mausi hadn't provided any information for her return back to Wiesbaden and that stupid form was taking exception to it. After a frantic search for a telephone number of the Travel Management people because you never find the really important numbers in the telephone directory easily Mausi had the following conversation:
Mausi: "Good morning. I want to go to Hamburg next week by train but I only need a one-way ticket to Hamburg."
TM: "Then simply order a one-way ticket."
Mausi: (Grrrr!) "I've tried to but the order form doesn't let me do that because I haven't filled in anything for the retun."
TM: "Try to fill in "none" for the return trip. If that doesn't work either you'll have to contact the respective preople in your own company because we didn't design this order form - they did."
Mausi felt ripe for murder. She knows exactly who designed that form, he's quite famous for consumer unfriendly designs. Needless to say that filling something like "none" into the empty spaces of the form didn't work either. In the end Mausi just saved the form and attached the file to an ordinary email to the TM people. That finally worked. But the time ones spends with these tools that are supposed to make things easier for you is just unbelievable.
The rest of the day went well but ended with Mausi having to pay a ransom for her car which had spend two days in the garage for a regular check-up. Sigh....
Posted by Mausi at April 17, 2008 10:09 AM
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