From A Young Professionals Blog
You might think I’m pathetic. Well, you’d be right. What is the corporate world coming to when a sophisticated collection of zeros and ones is elevated to the level of a friend? But you know what? It’s reality. We spend SO much time in front of spreadsheets we might as well face facts. I present for your consideration a hypothetical: if you rated the interactions you had in a given day in terms of personal satisfaction, pleasantness of counterparty, and willingness to interact more with this counterparty, who would finish first: your supervisor, your friend co-worker, your non-friend co-worker, or Excel? I suspect Excel would come a respectable second.
I guess I would consider Excel a friend. It’s a very particular type of friend though. It’s not a close friend. It’s not just an acquaintance. It’s that one type of friend who’s on the cusp of being a real friend. Sometimes that friend behaves normally and you wonder why you ever questioned the relationship. Then there’s the other times. Those times when refreshing a pivot tables wipes out part of the conditional formatting. Those times when your code breaks into debug mode and there isn’t even a break point. Those times when you just want to find the custom document properties, but can’t (hint: it’s under Office Orb – Prepare). It’s at those time when you say Why the #@!% do I hang out with this #@!%.
Excel is my friend only when it’s time for him to buy the next round.
Nevertheless, I wrote a little song about it…
You just call out Excel,
And you know wherever it’s at
It’ll come calc’ing, oh yeah baby
To help you again.
Pivot tables, functions and all,
All you have to do is call
And It’ll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cuz you’ve got a friend.
You’re a weirdo…
Excel hates me.
I don’t know if I’d consider Excel a friend. I’d think that I’d feel some sort of guilt after I beat it into submission if it were a friend. It’s not quite an adversary either though… I’d kind of liken it to one of those co-workers who tends to show real attitude on occasion and needs to be set right.
I’m gonna add him on facebook!
Hey John –
You’ve gotten Excel to buy you lots of rounds!
“Hint: it’s under Office Orb – Prepare”
If your friend has had a lobotomy, or suffers from Alzheimer’s, don’t you still consider him a friend?
I consider Excel more of a colleague, a co-worker with whom I earn a living. We have lots of discussions, even heated arguments, as we decide on the best approach for various tasks.
Excel? A friend?
We’re Cellmates.
The day I will think about seeing Excel as a friend (or as a cellmate) I strongly believe my wife will make sure that I will see a psychologist.
Friend? Perhaps. At least some distant acquaintance whom I like to keep tabs on.
Now excel give me more satisfactions and money that my ex-wife, and sure I put excel in a level of a friend