I Hate My Job

Warning: This is an entry of bitching, which is also probably difficult to follow, so: read at your own risk.

I have pretty much been doing the same thing since I started working here on May 8. Right now, the company has two (actually more, but I only deal with the two) programs that store customer information. We are switching over to a different program that can everything all the other ones can. This way we only have to use one program instead of multiple crappy-ass programs.

My job is to make sure the names of the companies are identical on the two programs, so that multiple accounts are not created. This is tedious and it drove me nuts at first, but I finally got used to it. It started out with 4,000 companies that to had be corrected. After I finished (or thought I was finished) the query was run again to see which companies did not match. I was shocked when there were still 1,000 companies. I realized that this was because that when I fixed one program to match an account, it no longer matched the other account. This might help:

Program 1......................................Program 2

Account#..... Name : ....................Account: ...........Name:

......1 ..............ABC ...........................Z.............. ABC Corp

......2 ..............ABC Corp ....................Z.............. ABC Corp

Both accounts 1 and 2 are linked to account Z. I would receive a spreadsheet with just 1 and Z because 2 and Z are identical (and I would not even know about 2). If I found out the correct name is just ABC. I would change account Z. Since I did not know about account 2, I would not be able to correct. So, when I thought I was finished, I really wasn't because when the spreadsheet is created again, I would see this:

Program 1.............................. Program 2
Account# .....Name : ...............Account: .......Name:
......2 ............ABC Corp .................Z........... ABC

This time I'd change account 2 so that it would match Z. Now both 1 and 2 match Z.

Today I came across another problem: Sometimes when I made changes in Program 1, they didn't show up in Program 2. This was the point where I emailed the IT chick and said (to myself), "Screw this shit. I refuse to work until I figure out what the hell is going on." (Un)Fortunately, my boss came by and I asked him what the hell was going on. It turns out that if the customer hasn't paid s/he is coded as "ind" instead of "mem" and only "mem"s appear on program 2. Luckily, this doesn't really affect what I've been, so it hasn't been for nothing (yay!). It does just make my job more frustrating. I spent the rest of the day going through the spreadsheet checking which inconsistencies were due to the "ind"s. There were a shitload. On the positive side, it means I don't have do research on all these companies to see which is the proper name.