Christmas parties and bonuses

I admit that I like my job. If I hated it like you, I'd have quit eons ago.

 

I'm with you there, Doc. Dude, if you think the entire newspaper industry is shit, then get the fuck out of it.

But I will add one thing I learned in 2016. I never realized how little I would miss it until it was gone and I began living a "normal" day cycle.

Last Wednesday, I spent two hours cleaning up an Excel spreadsheet so it would run cleanly when I did a mass mailing and mail merge. And I enjoyed that little bit of minutia ... because I'd never done it before. And that's the way things are with a lot of aspects in a new career. What other people think are boring, they're not so boring when you haven't done them before.

 

I have really struggled with programs like Excel and even Microsoft Word, because it's nothing we used in the newspaper business, and nothing that I used in college, I don't think. Maybe we used Word Perfect? I don't even remember. I remember I had to buy Microsoft Office for the first time when I started writing a book, but even then I barely used any of the functions other than typing into it.

 

That isn't true at all.

 

It is in Russia.

 

I'm sure there's not one part of the Office suite that I use to its full capability. Hell, using Outlook Calendar to keep an office running smoothly -- it's something I hadn't even considered before.

And I've just been introduced to Access, with PowerPoint on the way. Learning all over again.

 

I am having so much fun with Excel, I do spreadsheets just for fun and then show my wife, like I'm a second-grader.

My workplace just hired an actual Microsoft expert. Holy shit. His adjustments to our Word templates have cut the time needed for all of us to do our work by at least 20 percent. I am using functions that I never knew existed two months ago.

 

Danny, this isn't Russia. ... Is this Russia? No, this isn't Russia.

 

This might be the saddest sentence ever written here.

 

Try it, baby. You'll like it.

 

Excited enough to show her your pop-up?

 

Just wait until you learn about VLOOKUP and PivotTables.