Technology Marches Onward

People don't sexually harass people. Computers sexually harass people.

Sexual harassment in the workplace used to be such a pervasive problem that, to this day, employers hand out brochures and hold special training sessions to convince workers not to pinch their cohorts' bottoms or shout "Hubba Hubba!" at them.

And of course there are still a few of the old guard left, especially in a workplace like mine, where many employees have been working at the same job for upwards of 20-25 years. They've been retrained as effectively as possible, bless their hearts. They are aware that it's not acceptable to grope their coworkers, and that practically nobody is actually named "honey." Some of them may still require the occasional gentle reminder from senior management that no, your cubicle is actually over on this side of the floor, and no, your daily business can't be conducted with someone who works in a completely unrelated department, and no, if you ask someone if she's busy and she says yes, you aren't supposed to come on in and make yourself comfortable.

The more subtle stuff, like Slightly Sticky Eyes Syndrome, can't really be addressed as directly - but with the very occasional exception, these old guys are completely harmless. (Sorry boys!)

As far as the newer, younger guys, I'm more likely to sexually harass them than the other way around. Hopefully they don't mind. They haven't stopped inviting me to break, anyway; and to my knowledge none of them is yet working from home.

So what's a self-respecting employer to do when it's effectively stamped out sexual harassment among its workers? Why, they have to get software to do it, of course. For the last couple of weeks I've been working on a project to digitize a few buttloads (metric) of old roadway data, using nothing but a scanner and an extremely dirty-minded optical recognition program.

It's supposed to digitize whole documents on its own, but it doesn't actually read all that well, so you have to proof everything. Still, it's faster (slightly) than just re-entering all the data by hand. It does okay with the numbers, usually, but it can get a bit creative with some of the characters. Last week it decided that one of the column headers ("*** CITY" if the original document is to believed) read "ASS CITY." I was strongly tempted to let that one go through, but I didn't want to encourage the thing.

The program is disturbingly prone to substitute naughty words for the correct ones, even where the original is fairly legible. I guess I can understand it coming up with the Department of "PUBIC" Transportation, as it's been doing from the get-go; but "PHALLIC"?! Now, come on. That's not even close!

It likes to suggest leaving the "O" out of "COUNTY," as well; and today it was insisting that the numbers I was scanning over were for "COPULATION BY DISTRICT." I do have to concede that those numbers presumably would, indeed, be higher in districts with larger populations. But I don't really want to know.

There's no question that the software fosters a hostile work environment, although that's a completely separate issue from its inappropriate suggestions. You can't save your work without retyping the file name every time; it doesn't remember. This is an extra pain because you need to save very, very frequently - the software tends to shut itself down suddenly without warning.

Hey, wait just a minute here! Inefficient, check. Ineffective, check. Makes inappropriate remarks, check. Takes frequent breaks in the middle of a task, check. Requires a human brain to micromanage it in order to get any actual work out of it, check.

Oh my God. I think IT is testing a software package to replace all the old state employees. And it won't do any good for me to complain and get to work from home, because they'll just send a copy with me.