It took all three of us to take down the horde. It wasn’t just the ones that appeared right after Saito arrived. After that, there were 5-6 more waves. At the very least, in terms of time, Saito, who joined later, had been processing functions for eight hours straight. Inoue had already been here for 16 hours. Her yawning had become more noticable. It had been about 10 hours for me. I’m used to this amount of overtime, but a worker’s work was manual labour. My legs, arms, and whole body was getting tired.
The functions that appeared changed little by little each time, but sometimes they didn’t change at all. It was all a waste of effort, but the user’s behaviour was understandable. When I built a sheet, I would go through a lot of trila and error. If I expanded a formula and noticed an error or a line that returned a different value than expected, I had to correct it.
In addition, it wasn’t enough to just make the formulas give the right result. The formulas had to be as simple and easy to understand as possible. It wasn’t just for others. It was also for my own sake in case I had to update it in future after some time had passed. I had been the only Excel craftsman at my previous workplace after all.
For example, the user of this sheet eventually stopped using IFERROR and wrote the following instead.
=IF(ISBLANK(value of referenced row), “”, {formula})
I understood their intention. IFERROR was easy to use, but it was also a violent function that just ignored any errors. There was a possibility that errors that would normally require correction in the main formula wouldn’t be noticed.
The user’s formula was well written in terms of ease of understanding. As you could see, ISBLANK was a fucntion that checked whether or not a value referenced by the formula was blank or not, processing the formlua to check without executing it. Such a structure was extremely easy to understand.
I appreciated their attitude, but if it were me, I would have settled for IFERROR. IFERROR’s formluas were simpler and the formula as a whole wasn’t so complex that it was necessary to strive for readability. Above all, I found it disgusting that the main formula excuted when the IF value was FALSE. If the format of the value to be processed was known, they should have used ISTEXT or ISNUMBER instead.
=IF(ISTEXT(value of referenced row), {formula}, “”)
I don’t intend to correct the user. It’s just that i would have written it like that instead. There was value in of itself by doing things in a way that each person was familiar with. I respect Excel professionals who were passionate about their work. That was why I continued to process functions even when my whole body was worn out. Moreover, the user had no way of knowing that their own preferences had caused workers to work overtime.
“I’m already at my limit…”
Inoue said depressedly.
“Oh, good job. You two should go take a break. I’ll take over for a while.”
“Eh, are you sure? Saito-san has been here for quite some time as well.”
“Yeah, I’m used to it, so it’s okay.”
“Then excuse us. We’ll take a break for now.”
At that moment, a buzzer sounded from my bag.
“Oh, looks like the user has gone to another floor. Well, the rest is just the tally sheets, so there shouldn’t be too many. Leave it to me and get some rest.”
Saito, what a great boss. When I was still alive, my bosses would always force me to do something before going home themselves. I’m glad I was reincarnated.
Returning to the campervan, I lay down on a chair. The moment Inoue got back, she got into her bed before starting to breathe deeply. Just as I thought I was going to sleep myself, I heard Saito’s voice over the walkie-talkie.
“Ahem…Takahashi, I’m sorry, but could you please come back…?”
It looks like overtime work would continue.
※Functions
ISBLANK https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093290
ISTEXT https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093297
ISNUMBER https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093296