During my second standby shift. I discovered in the dinosaur game that if you crouch while jumping, you would fall down faster.
This meant I could avoid the problem of hitting an obstacle immediately after landing as my speed increased. With that in mind, I practiced it repeatedly, but ended up making a series of mistakes, such as landing too quickly and hitting the cactus I had just jumped over. I also practiced making large and small jumps. However, it was difficult to lightly tap the jump button. As I practiced I would sometimes fail to make the jump entirely.
I continued to practice my techniques little by little, but I still couldn’t break the high score. Just as I was about to take a break, I received a call from Inoue over the walkie-talkie.
“Takahashi-san! A large group, a large group! Please come immediately!”
Hurriedly entering the room, the sheet was covered in functions. There was REGEXREPLACE, VLOOKUP, and some chicken like functions I had never seen before, running around every cell.
“Um, what’s with the chickens?”
“Oh, it’s your first time seeing them? That’s IFERROR. You know the syntax, right?”
“Of course, it’s fine.”
IFERROR was frequently used when processing pasted data like this. Since the number of rows of data to be pasted may not be defined, it was use to stop errors from occurring even if there was no data.
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP( ), “”)
By writing something like that, you could return a blank cell instead of an error. For us workers, it was a blessing if there were no errors. On the other hand, it also led to to a large number of cells where functions would be applied to unnecessarily. In other words, it was tough either way.
“Let’s just do our best.”
Inoue and I both grabbed a bug net and a pair of branch shears as we began processing the functions.
#########
Round about 2 hours later. Just when the end was in sight, all the functions that had been crowded together suddenly disappeared.
“Eh? What happened?”
“It looks like User-san deleted everything…”
The cells that held the original formula were still glowing faintly, but the lights of the cells that had been processed so far had also disappeared.
It was true that such things did happen quite often. I thought I had the formula set up, but I had forgotten some considerations and had to rewrite it. Common problems included forgetting to add a $ to a reference, discovering an unexpected case error, or decided that it would be better to use a different function.
In other words, I knew exactly what would happen next. The functions that should have been process would be revived and our last two hours of work would be wasted.
“Um, it’s almost time for my shift, should I call Saito-san so you can take a break?”
“Is it that time already? Understood. I’m sorry, but please wait until Saito-san gets here.”
“Got it.”
Saito arrived 5 minutes later. As he looked around.
“Uhh, Inoue, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’ll be able to take your break…”
“EHHHH—-!!!!”
※Functions
IFERROR https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093304