Help me get my employer into the 20th Century [sic]
June 16, 2022 11:24 AM Subscribe
My employer makes us do handwritten work when it would be about a thousand times easier to let us to the same work electronically. This drives me, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking bananas. Please help me find the right combination of words that will persuade my boss to change this policy.
For obvious reasons, I don't want to get into too much detail, but to make a long story short, when my department makes proposed changes to written documents, we're required to do them by hand, in pencil. This is a massive honking waste of time, because of course, we wind up having to do the edits first on a draft and then make fair copies, effectively requiring us to do the work twice. To make it worse, the people on whose documents we're making the changes don't understand how to read copy editors' marks, so instead of "u/s" or "-#", which would have been readily understood back in the day, we have to write out "Underline, not italic" or "take out one space" and so on. It's maddening.
The reason we still do it this way is obscure to me. Basically, it's "We've always done it this way and this is how such and such people are used to it." Well, of course such and such are used to it that way, because we're never tried any other way! Part of the problem is that until two years ago, we used WordPerfect with internal documents circulated in Courier New (yes, I am serious), and believe me, it was not easy to get that changed to get with the rest of the world. The institution I work for is very, very set in its ways -- hence the problem.
As you probably don't recall because who the hell used WordPerfect after about, oh, 1998, that application had no "Track Changes" feature; you had to mark changes by hand by doing bold for insertions, strikeouts for deletions, and so forth. Since Word, which we now use, does have the Track Changes feature, it would be childishly easy to make proposed changes that way, and even more childishly easy to add or reject changes to the document. But no. Every time someone brings up the idea of doing changes electronically, it's rejected for no good reason.
So my question is: Has anyone ever successfully persuaded their very conservative employer to implement a major change in practice, and if so, do you have any advice of how to do this without either making everyone (including myself) mad or being dismissed because "We're always done it this way and it's worked just fine?" (It does not, in fact, work just fine for those of us actually doing the work.) I've spoken to other people in my department (there are only six of us), and they're in agreement that the way we do things now is ridiculous.
For obvious reasons, I don't want to get into too much detail, but to make a long story short, when my department makes proposed changes to written documents, we're required to do them by hand, in pencil. This is a massive honking waste of time, because of course, we wind up having to do the edits first on a draft and then make fair copies, effectively requiring us to do the work twice. To make it worse, the people on whose documents we're making the changes don't understand how to read copy editors' marks, so instead of "u/s" or "-#", which would have been readily understood back in the day, we have to write out "Underline, not italic" or "take out one space" and so on. It's maddening.
The reason we still do it this way is obscure to me. Basically, it's "We've always done it this way and this is how such and such people are used to it." Well, of course such and such are used to it that way, because we're never tried any other way! Part of the problem is that until two years ago, we used WordPerfect with internal documents circulated in Courier New (yes, I am serious), and believe me, it was not easy to get that changed to get with the rest of the world. The institution I work for is very, very set in its ways -- hence the problem.
As you probably don't recall because who the hell used WordPerfect after about, oh, 1998, that application had no "Track Changes" feature; you had to mark changes by hand by doing bold for insertions, strikeouts for deletions, and so forth. Since Word, which we now use, does have the Track Changes feature, it would be childishly easy to make proposed changes that way, and even more childishly easy to add or reject changes to the document. But no. Every time someone brings up the idea of doing changes electronically, it's rejected for no good reason.
So my question is: Has anyone ever successfully persuaded their very conservative employer to implement a major change in practice, and if so, do you have any advice of how to do this without either making everyone (including myself) mad or being dismissed because "We're always done it this way and it's worked just fine?" (It does not, in fact, work just fine for those of us actually doing the work.) I've spoken to other people in my department (there are only six of us), and they're in agreement that the way we do things now is ridiculous.
If everyone in your department is on board... just switch. Do it all electronically for a week, and also track and document how much time the electronic approach saves (presumably your employer has some idea of your department's typical throughput per unit time under the handwritten system).
posted by heatherlogan at 11:37 AM on June 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by heatherlogan at 11:37 AM on June 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
AskAManger's advice would be to push back as a group.
posted by edbles at 11:54 AM on June 16, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by edbles at 11:54 AM on June 16, 2022 [13 favorites]
I'd agree that the six of you should just implement the change as much as possible.
Otherwise, you could do a time study and track how much time it takes each of you to edit a document in each way and extrapolate to the amount of time you would then have to do other things.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 12:01 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Otherwise, you could do a time study and track how much time it takes each of you to edit a document in each way and extrapolate to the amount of time you would then have to do other things.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 12:01 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
So I have recently been part of a collective effort to get a similar practical thing changed at my workplace that had been turned down previously. We didn't use arguments about the amount of time spent as our primary reason because we decided that wouldn't be as persuasive. We needed to get permission to change from a committee. We spoke to about half the people on the committee individually - the ones most affected. We started with the people whose opinions we didn't really know, and them armed with their non-objection, we tackled the person who truly objected with our best arguments. We focused on how our improvement would reduce the risk of error and provided mitigating strategies for the key risks as perceived by committee members.
In your case, I think you need to try and work collectively, but also I think the workflow needs and preference of the people currently looking at hard copies of your document matter. Do they want changes in hard copy? If so why? What is it really, however ridiculous in your mind, that the people who are preventing the changes are worried about? Is it a concern that you'll make unmarked changes? Do they, themselves like to review on paper? Is it that they believe you will miss changes if you work electronically? Whatever, how can you mitigate whatever risks and issues they believe will arise.
Also, when my colleague and I were plotting the change we made, we did not do it half-heartedly as we recognised that if we got a 'no' again, we'd be stuck with the more laborious and time-consuming approach for at least another year if not longer. Even though it was out of all proportion to the significance of the change we wanted to make.
posted by plonkee at 12:21 PM on June 16, 2022 [8 favorites]
In your case, I think you need to try and work collectively, but also I think the workflow needs and preference of the people currently looking at hard copies of your document matter. Do they want changes in hard copy? If so why? What is it really, however ridiculous in your mind, that the people who are preventing the changes are worried about? Is it a concern that you'll make unmarked changes? Do they, themselves like to review on paper? Is it that they believe you will miss changes if you work electronically? Whatever, how can you mitigate whatever risks and issues they believe will arise.
Also, when my colleague and I were plotting the change we made, we did not do it half-heartedly as we recognised that if we got a 'no' again, we'd be stuck with the more laborious and time-consuming approach for at least another year if not longer. Even though it was out of all proportion to the significance of the change we wanted to make.
posted by plonkee at 12:21 PM on June 16, 2022 [8 favorites]
1. get an intern
2. "oh no, they can't cursive!"
3. welcome to the 21st century
posted by dum spiro spero at 12:31 PM on June 16, 2022 [7 favorites]
2. "oh no, they can't cursive!"
3. welcome to the 21st century
posted by dum spiro spero at 12:31 PM on June 16, 2022 [7 favorites]
the people demanding handwritten changes can't read copy editing marks? fuck them. i am in a similar situation, and have not been able to persuade anyone. still printing, writing on hard copy, scanning, and emailing back. i feel your pain.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 12:54 PM on June 16, 2022
posted by misanthropicsarah at 12:54 PM on June 16, 2022
If your employer has any trouble attracting or retaining talent, that might be another argument to add to the time-saving factor.
posted by trig at 12:54 PM on June 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by trig at 12:54 PM on June 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
Would it help to do a demo showing how change tracking works in Word? I would also show how much paper is being used/wasted and the cost saving of not using paper. Normally you will need to show the benefit to the company in order for changes to be accepted.
posted by tman99 at 1:26 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by tman99 at 1:26 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Hm, what a fun challenge!
I like sageleaf's advice a lot, but you could also start issuing the same edits both in track changes and on paper. And on the hard copy include a post-it: "In case you can't understand what I wrote, I e-mailed you the exact same thing in Word. The handy track changes feature should make the changes much easier to see. Neat side benefit? You can reject a change or suggest a different wording by pushing the buttons on your mouse or keyboard instead of using up expensive fountain pen ink to cross things out and write in new text. No more blots! Is the print too small? Just push the Ctrl button and the plus sign at the same time and voila! You can make the print as large as you like on your computer monitor. Easy to read, easy to edit: and all without the benefit of a loup!"
For extra fun and to push more people over to e-edits, you could start gradually to make your pencilwork less and less legible, but so slowly that nobody catches on. Best if you can figure out a way to keep the writing looking beautifully neat and tidy but somehow make it slowly less and less easy to decipher.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:36 PM on June 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
I like sageleaf's advice a lot, but you could also start issuing the same edits both in track changes and on paper. And on the hard copy include a post-it: "In case you can't understand what I wrote, I e-mailed you the exact same thing in Word. The handy track changes feature should make the changes much easier to see. Neat side benefit? You can reject a change or suggest a different wording by pushing the buttons on your mouse or keyboard instead of using up expensive fountain pen ink to cross things out and write in new text. No more blots! Is the print too small? Just push the Ctrl button and the plus sign at the same time and voila! You can make the print as large as you like on your computer monitor. Easy to read, easy to edit: and all without the benefit of a loup!"
For extra fun and to push more people over to e-edits, you could start gradually to make your pencilwork less and less legible, but so slowly that nobody catches on. Best if you can figure out a way to keep the writing looking beautifully neat and tidy but somehow make it slowly less and less easy to decipher.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:36 PM on June 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is giving me nightmares of an employer I had in 2011 that did this. I found it so SO incredibly rude that the managers expected the professionals under them to basically be secretaries (because of course, we no longer had secretaries because technology has supposedly replaced them ... )
I don't know what to tell you. If your employer is at all open to feedback, then you need to get everyone possible together to ask for it at the same time.
posted by haptic_avenger at 2:12 PM on June 16, 2022
I don't know what to tell you. If your employer is at all open to feedback, then you need to get everyone possible together to ask for it at the same time.
posted by haptic_avenger at 2:12 PM on June 16, 2022
Plonkee you are a bureaucratic genius. Well done. Seriously. This should be sidebarred.
posted by haptic_avenger at 2:15 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by haptic_avenger at 2:15 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I've been there. If the above solutions offered don't work, I do know something where you won't have to physically mark copy but you can make it look like you have: custom markup stamps in Adobe Acrobat. For this, you'd need to create pdfs in your word processor, and you'd need the actual Acrobat program rather than the free Reader program, but you can basically make up Stamps of the various types of things you have to put on the documents and then apply them in the pdfs. Then you could print them out, send them around (I don't know what fair copies are but hopefully that's not something printing the pdfs would conflict with), and then when you get responses from the Pleistocene people, input those in the native program you are using for the documents.
Basically, custom Stamps are anything you want them to be--I used to have hard-copy only clients for proofreading, especially, but sometimes for copyediting, and once I learned about stamps, I was nuts for them. They saved my hands so much, not to mention paper because I no longer had to print out huge documents to start my hard-copy markups. Here's a page with examples of some custom copyediting Stamps, but you can make your own with Acrobat using the types of crap you have to write by hand now. There are tons of tutorials out there about how to create custom Stamps in Acrobat, but if you can't find any you like, feel free to memail and I can send you the info I created when I was teaching classes on how to proofread in Acrobat (back when people still mostly used paper). I always had students who just reviled the idea of using something electronic for editing/proofing, until I told them about custom Stamps and it was like those old cat macros with "my god, it's full of stars."
I realize that's still not ideal. Just offering it as a potential solution if they really cannot get their asses out of the dark ages. (Also, one way I convinced one of my workplaces to embrace the PDF markups was appealing to their sense of order by telling them that the little blue carets, which they were so disturbed by because people missed them all the time, and they couldn't see the red strikethroughs at all, was to show them Acrobat's Comments Summary feature, where they could see ALL the comments on the side, and check the little boxes to ensure that each edit had been addressed by the designer and all changes were made in InDesign. You can also respond in Acrobat--and Reader, so not everyone has to have the full Acrobat--to editing comments, which can be helpful to establish who's making input and why or why not something should change. You can even make voice responses and add images to your comments. I'm not an evangelist for evil Adobe, even if it sounds like it, I've just learned to use the program to my advantage over the years.)
posted by kitten kaboodle at 3:37 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Basically, custom Stamps are anything you want them to be--I used to have hard-copy only clients for proofreading, especially, but sometimes for copyediting, and once I learned about stamps, I was nuts for them. They saved my hands so much, not to mention paper because I no longer had to print out huge documents to start my hard-copy markups. Here's a page with examples of some custom copyediting Stamps, but you can make your own with Acrobat using the types of crap you have to write by hand now. There are tons of tutorials out there about how to create custom Stamps in Acrobat, but if you can't find any you like, feel free to memail and I can send you the info I created when I was teaching classes on how to proofread in Acrobat (back when people still mostly used paper). I always had students who just reviled the idea of using something electronic for editing/proofing, until I told them about custom Stamps and it was like those old cat macros with "my god, it's full of stars."
I realize that's still not ideal. Just offering it as a potential solution if they really cannot get their asses out of the dark ages. (Also, one way I convinced one of my workplaces to embrace the PDF markups was appealing to their sense of order by telling them that the little blue carets, which they were so disturbed by because people missed them all the time, and they couldn't see the red strikethroughs at all, was to show them Acrobat's Comments Summary feature, where they could see ALL the comments on the side, and check the little boxes to ensure that each edit had been addressed by the designer and all changes were made in InDesign. You can also respond in Acrobat--and Reader, so not everyone has to have the full Acrobat--to editing comments, which can be helpful to establish who's making input and why or why not something should change. You can even make voice responses and add images to your comments. I'm not an evangelist for evil Adobe, even if it sounds like it, I've just learned to use the program to my advantage over the years.)
posted by kitten kaboodle at 3:37 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
I had a job more than a decade ago where someone asked me to handwrite my copyediting notes and I simply told them "no one does it that way anymore" and used Word's Track Changes feature anyway.
posted by Jacqueline at 3:37 PM on June 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Jacqueline at 3:37 PM on June 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
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posted by sageleaf at 11:31 AM on June 16, 2022 [33 favorites]