Reddish Musings

I really hate doing data entry.

Maybe it's just the specific kind of data entry I'm doing (insurance forms), but I'm sorely disappointed by how it has turned out.  I envisioned a cubicle with stacks and stacks of papers that I would go through and enter information from, verbatim, until I was blue in the face.  That, menial as it may sound, actually appealed to me.

Instead, we have this technology that allows you to scan in all those stacks of papers, and it tries to read them for you.  And it fails, miserably.  But it becomes my job to skim every unique form for useful information, all the while double-checking what the computer has assumed it was trying to say (and it is hardly ever right in its assumption).  I guarantee my job would be done faster and more accurately if they would just let me erase everything and type from the beginning.  Instead, I make mistakes, because I made the error of assuming that the "helpful" technology was actually going to be right with any manner of consistency.

It's infuriating after long enough.  Every form turns into a maze of useless information, while I skim and probably give myself eye strain out the wazoo trying to find the little tidbits of alphanumerical data floating around on the pages (and each form looks entirely different from the last).

The days drag on, and on.  If it weren't for amusing podcasts that keep my brain active, I probably would have put my 2 weeks in already.  Today was hell, though.  

It's just incredibly frustrating to have a job that should, by all rights, be entirely repetitive and tedious and boring, but is instead always teetering on the edge of those things. It's boring enough to make me tired, but it's not repetitive enough to allow me to get into a "flow," and let the work go fast and easy.  Every new form is like a new stumbling block, with a different layout, and different crap I have to remember to pay attention to or completely ignore, based on utterly arbitrary standards that I was never trained on in the first place.  Having never had testicles, I can't say for sure, but I imagine the perpetual feeling of almost getting into the swing of things are what blue balls feel like.

So, I'm trying to focus my brain on constructive things instead of letting it stagnate.  I'm focusing on my future school decisions, my future career decisions, amusing blogs I can come up with in the future, and so on.  I don't know how long I can keep this up, though.  Can I survive the Summer?  Tune in next time.