If you’ve ever done any sort of programming or word processing, you know the seductive power of the Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V key combinations. All these words copied and pasted so quickly! This is more efficient than the ESPN Plays of the Week! I remember learning of this wondrous key combo in my first 2 weeks of training at Accenture. Teammate Jen from Manila was writing code at a ridiculous speed as I looked over her shoulder, and that’s when she told me. Why write your own words when someone else has already done it better!
Well, it came back to bite me here at POTM. Seems in writing my SQL queries to pull back recurring orders, I copied and pasted the date ranges for the orders I was seeking, and neglected to update the year in the process (thank you customer Mike for pointing it out late last week). Not a big deal, until you start getting to orders placed after January 1. When I first realized the gaffe, I was admittedly quite nervous. After some calm investigation, turns out the number of affected accounts was relatively small, with a small number of customers missing their February pickles. I packaged those additional orders today and will ship them tomorrow AM along with a note explaining the gaffe.
The moral of the story is, Copy-Paste can be a potent tool, but one that must be used with the utmost vigilance. Much like dijon mustard.
