Working in IT (Information Technology) gives you the opportunity to examine the internal procedures of a company in great detail. It’s fascinating stuff when you’re able to detach yourself from actually trying to model the system and data in software and just sit back and ponder 1) How and 2) Why the company’s procedures evolved into what they are.

You learn things about companies that they think are prefectly normal but strike you as odd.

One client doesn’t have unique serial numbers. They were (and are) unique only to that model, so you have to provide the model and the serial number to identify the product. It works, but it’s weird, and you wonder why it’s Just That Way.

Another client has a mission critical system that’s run on a machine somewhere in that data center room, and they’re pretty damned sure it’s got “Sun Microsystems” on the front if it but damned if they know which box it is.

Then you walk into a client’s business where the sales team has informed you that you’re The Guy because the sales team determined that they cannot send in a Jew, Mexican, or woman. The client’s “ERP” system was written by his partner’s brother that had a degree in advanced physics and took a class or two on database design and whipped up an “ERP” system in Access with tables, views, and queries named not after the products, not the departments, not the processes, but the name of the freaking person responsible for updating them.

I actually didn’t mind working with that guy. Smart fellow and a straight shooter. He was a bit offensive at times but I can deal with that pretty well.

Then you come to the customer I’m currently working for. A local county’s court system to manager juvenile cases.

Holy balls. Every whaked out business procedure I’ve seen is light years more straight foward than this.

I reckon the oldest business I’ve ever worked for is about 80 years old. The court system is, conservatively, pushing upwards of 400 years given that the US inherited a buttload of nomenclature and proceedings from the British. That means lots of strange words that I’m not familiar with and have a hard time wrapping my head around. The whole issue is further compounded by the fact that a judge, rightfully, can change their mind and totally change the course of action on a dime.

The ramifications of such a decision are simple — but the amount of data that has to be consulted and manipulated is staggering. I have a new found respect for those that deal with such paperwork every day. It blows my mind, and I know now why criminal records are simply lost from time-to-time.

The good thing is that the project I’m working on has, without a doubt, saved time for multiple departments within the system and we’re now working on cleaning up a few things to make the proccesses faster and reducing the window for human error.