We had a little bit of excitement at work today. We've recently redone one of our fixed routes to include a new service area. Which, of course, meant some public hearings, and distributing a gazillion new schedules. The new schedule started today.

Looks like someone screwed up.

The weird thing is that lots of eyeballs looked at the schedule and no one caught the error. The error went something like this:

It takes 10 minutes to get from Stop A to Stop B. It takes 5 minutes to get from Stop B to Stop C. It takes another 3 minutes to get from Stop C to Stop D. So, in the morning the schedules looks something like:

Stop A: 8:00
Stop B: 8:10
Stop C: 8:15
Stop D: 8:18

Makes sense? Let's move on to the afternoon, when we discovered the mistake.

Stop A: 2:54
Stop B: 3:04
Stop C: 3:07
Stop D: 3:47

Oops! Our driver called in a little after 3PM and said, "Um... Could you look at the schedule and tell me what I'm supposed to do for 40 minutes between Stops C and D?"

Basically, our shoestring operation rushed to get the schedules finished, and the error went unnoticed. Unnoticed, that is, until the driver actually drove the route with the new schedule.

It should have been caught in the scheduling. It should have been caught in a test run. It should have been caught in a public hearing, in printing, in just looking at the schedule for the past week while reading times off to people over the phone. But it wasn't.

Well, I spent about an hour fixing the schedule. The Ops Manager wasn't in today, so I presented the revised schedule to the General Manager. I managed to fix the error and give the route an extra run, while finishing up four minutes earlier than it would have otherwise.

Heh. I'm such a brown-noser sometimes.

Oh, and I got some interesting email today. Someone, apparently, was offended by this silly page I made. My question is, how can you possibly be offended by partially-eaten snack cakes? The email didn't make it clear, but just said that the person was very unhappy with the page. I replied (basically saying, "HUH??"), but I'm not really expecting an answer, since the email said, "Don't bother responding." grin They called my sense of humor "sick." You know you've arrived when you offend someone with snack cakes.

One week ago was my last night together with Dave. I'm a little sad, but coping. This long distance shit sucks.