STORY
BEHIND THE POEM AIN’T TECHNOLOGY GRAND?
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The City of Vancouver decided to upgrade
their payroll system to the tune of twenty million dollars. This was to
ensure there would be no problems with the Y2K bug. I’m told it would take
approximately $700,000 to upgrade the old system and make it Y2K compliant.
Then again, it would not have the new features and capabilities of the
new wonder system.
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Our old pay stubs used to be a half
sheet of paper with absolutely everything laid out in a clear easy to read
format. The new system spits out three pages of information that nobody
can understand. To make matters worse, it does not understand Statutory
Holidays and the overtime money they mean. As a result, everyone gets credited
with the hours but no money.
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People that work overtime get paid
for .3 (that’s point three) hours instead of the 6 hours that they are
owed. The difference in pay is $15 instead of $300.
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Worse yet, some people have been missed
completely and did not get paid. One fellow got a large paycheque one payday
and thought nothing of it because of overtime he had worked. Next payday
he received a cheque for $36. Pretty tough to meet mortgage payments on
that. It turned out that the marvellous new computer paid him twice on
the one payday and when the error was found, deducted it off his next cheque.
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One thing that has been scrupulously
accurate though, is the deductions. Income Tax and all those other wonderful
tarifs come off the cheque like clockwork. Lord knows we can’t deprive
those politicians of their massive pensions.
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Anyway, as anyone who knows me can
attest, I love computers. I’ve owned a personal computer of one kind or
another since 1978 and been online since 1982. It just seems to me that
the fancier the technology becomes, the more complicated everything else
seems to get. ‘Nuff said.
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