1. aspidistra

    aspidistra New Member

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    Have you ever worked as a data entry clerk/typist?

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by aspidistra, Feb 27, 2013.

    I hope this is the right place to post this...

    I'm trying to position a character in a menial data entry job which isolates him from the rest of the employees. Having worked in a job with vaguely this description, I know this phenomenon does occur.

    What I'm hoping for is examples of what tasks people might have had to do when they worked in a role like this. For example, I had to do countless hours changing one setting in various nodes of a learning management system. Also did mindless formatting of word documents to make them look the uniform.

    I'm only trying to position the character in the same mental state as I was in during that job, not write an autobiography. I have an industry and approximate business type in mind for this character's employment but I'm struggling to think of plausible tasks that he might be involved in. It doesn't sound like an important detail but I feel with the right parameters I can use it to create a rich subtext.

    Please inspire me with stories of your worst data entry experiences!! :)
     
  2. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    Browsing through the internet in an attempt to do "online research" for "funny and pointless content" that entertains the student niche market.

    Write and schedule Facebook and Twitter updates via Hoot Suite - 20 posts a day, 7 days a week. There's only so many times you can type "OMG this is incredible!" and "How dumb are some people?" and "90% off all shoes - grab them before they go!" before you go a little nuts.

    Oh this is a classic. No joke, I did this for a month. Reply to your own messages, pretending to be a different user, on an empty student forum. Yes, reply to your own messages. I created 5-10 different user accounts via the backend with fake emails so that I could log in as different "people". I then proceeded to create threads with questions such as "Why don't I have a boyfriend?" and then replying to myself as Pineapple181, "Well, you just have to wait for the right guy," and then replying as Mango68, "Go to clubs and pull, it's the best way!" and then SunshineSahara, "Stop looking, I think people who pull in clubs are stupid", upon which Mango68 would say, "Everyone does it!"

    See, I can still do it, 3 years later... It was the worst 2 hours of my working day.

    Let's see, what else? Oh logging click-traffic via bit.ly and "analysing" why certain posts are popular. Copy and pasting every last damn social status into an excel doc (remember, 20 per day, 7 days a week - that makes 140 statuses. I worked in this job for a whole year)

    Copy and pasting individual quiz questions from quiz sites into the backend of our own site.

    Doing exactly the same thing to film info and uploading trailers. Probably the fun part of the day actually.

    So there you go :) go wild lol
     
  3. GhostWolfe

    GhostWolfe New Member

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    I used to be an office junior for HR/Payroll. At least once a week I had to spend half a day filing - in the tiny file room, boring as all hell. Before they implemented the new payroll system, we used to have to manually enter everyone's hours into the pay system. Which was a couple of hours of three people working in absolute silence because you didn't want to make a mistake. Then we'd have to print out the reports and one of use would read out the hours, while another cross-checked that it was correct.
     
  4. Shannonpeel

    Shannonpeel New Member

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    I've done data entry during some of my past positions and it was boring. When I try to remember it all I can think of is mentally tiring, mind wondering, time stretching on forever and feeling so unimportant. These positions are usually very regulated. Start at 9 get 15 min. coffee break, 30 min lunch break, finish at 5. They usually also have measurable daily goals, entering in so many clients or so many accounts.
     
  5. aspidistra

    aspidistra New Member

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    hey thanks everyone! That's all very helpful stuff.
     
  6. GhostWolfe

    GhostWolfe New Member

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    Which is why someone needs to make data entry software with a Guitar Hero/Rock Band scoring system. If it's colourful & gives you points, people will do it all day :cool:
     
  7. JennyM

    JennyM New Member

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    Did a fill-in job once, copy typing knitting patterns, I don't believe a job can be more boring than that
     
  8. Tea Sipper

    Tea Sipper New Member

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    Boring job to say the least. Having to make a daily quota on correct entries was mind numbing. I found that my seat became uncomfortable, my forearm would fatigue and I started to play games in order to make it a little better. How many key strokes can be done in a minute? How fast can I get through this bundle of papers? Can I hold my breath until this entry is entered? Things like that. The other ladies in the office were able to chat a little, so listening in on their daily gossip did help too.
     
  9. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    As a teenager, I did some filing, some copying, I once separated the pink and yellow and blue copies into separate stacks for thousands of multipart forms, I spent a summer in college working full time in a library and doing lots of book shelving.

    My experience was that the completely mindless tasks, like separating the multipart forms, were less painful than the half-mindless tasks, like shelving books. With the completely mindless tasks I could think, and I've always been fairly good at entertaining myself with my own thoughts. Also, those colored stacks meant that if my brain did go wandering off too far, it was easy to check my own work and make sure I hadn't started mis-sorting.

    The shelving, for the first few weeks, occupied too much of my brain to allow me to think, because I had to insert the book in the proper place based on its alphanumeric code. That was horribly boring. I was startled that eventually I became able to shelve without any apparent conscious thought, and then the task was much less painful again.
     

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