OneAndOneIs2

I work (Until July, at any rate) for a pharmaceutical company, processing reports from human drug trials.

There are two completely separate databases that safety information is entered onto. One, which I work on, is composed of data from "immediate" reports - supposed to be sent to us within 24 hours of any adverse event occurring. The other is a more leisurely affair - made up of periodic reviews.

The idea is that by having (what should be) the same information coming in through two separate channels, you can compare the two and make sure that they agree, thus eliminating mistakes. Works pretty well. Usually.

A while ago, one of the biggest trials in the department, which I handled almost single-handedly, came to a close. It was time for the databases to be locked. And the people running it suddenly realized that now would be a good time to do that whole "reconciliation of the two databases" thing, because they hadn't bothered throughout the entire lifetime of the trial.

And naturally, they found dozens of little mistakes - "1" instead of "7" in this field, "ACB" instead of "ABC" in that field, and so on. Along with a bunch of reporting mistakes as well.

They all had to be reported and fixed, and they all had to be done before the databases were closed. In a sudden last-minute panic, myself and my immediate superior for that trial were dumped upon with a huge number of change requests.

That would have been bad enough. But the people who had neglected to reconcile at any point prior to the end had also failed to read the guidelines on how to make corrections. Instead of sending us "Change THIS to THAT please" requests signed by the original reporter, they had asked the original reporter to simply refax everything he had ever sent us.

Dozens of pages per report came screaming through the faxes, and did absolutely nothing to allow us to correct any of the reporting errors, as the re-faxed reports still contained the errors. A small forest at least was depopulated to make the paper for all the utterly useless faxes we were barraged with.

Left to ourselves, we might have just ignored the whole sorry mess and gotten on with some real work. But that was sadly not an option: The changes HAD to be made, incompetence notwithstanding.

So, almost entirely alone because of the sheer complexities of making these simple changes courtesy of the excess paperwork, I made them. All of them. On time.

That was three months ago. This afternoon, a bright orange piece of paper arrived on my desk: An "Above and Beyond" award for getting the work done.

Makes it all worthwhile.

Really.

But I'm still quitting in a month and a half's time