I love Arbitrary Decisions...

...as much as I love people who use the symbol for hearts instead of typing "love" (lazy bums.) My work flow was recently impacted by a seemingly arbitrary decision. In the long run it truly makes no difference to me, but it annoys me none the less. (And although I swore off blogging about work, I'm breaking the rules.) As I administer my databases, I have to write reports so that the database makes since to those less intimately acquainted with it than me. (What? Why don't you know that Column BD clearly is the product of Column D and AC.) As I design these reports using my own personal sense of style and propriety, I jot notes to myself on a legal pad. Nothing fancy as no one other than myself can read the incomprehensible scribbles. Quite frankly, often times I cannot read them, either. I rummaged through my supply room closet one day to appropriate a new legal pad only to find that the stack had been replaced with something called "Project Planner" notebooks. A quick inquiry of the administrative staff solved the problem: "The X-Team prefers these, so we aren't going to stock legal pads anymore. I can order them for you, if you want." An order that will take up to a week to get here, provided that it is remembered when placing the order. No, thanks. I took one of the "Project Planners" and set back to my cube. What an utterly useless piece of s***. The whole thing has a spiral wire binding it together. Perfect for catching on sweaters (which by the way are a staple in the summer because hypothermia is possible when sitting in front of a computer all day long.) As if the spiral weren't enough, the pages are perforated. Perfect for easy remove -- intentionally and unintentionally. The icing on the cake came when I tried to turn to the second page; spiral wire binding being insufficient by the publisher's standards, the left edge of the pages were pasted together like a good binding on a paperback book. While the decision may have started as arbitrary, it has become a full-fledged p.i.t.a.*. *Pain In The Ass