Thanksgiving Interview

Over Thanksgiving break I interview my mom for her view on the implementation of the software program of excel with her company back in the 90s. She first learned to use excel during an instruction course held by her company that taught the employees the basic functions of excel such as add, subtract, standard deviation etc. But she found that it was very difficult to master because she did not really understand the information session course and it took her a couple of months to really get the hang of using the new software. In the beginning my mom found that the software actually made her job more frustrating and distracting because of the formatting of the software, whereas in the past she could simply do the equations and process by hand or on a different computer. It made her less productive because she spent more time trying to understand how to use the program, and made her job less enjoyable as she quickly got angry when the technology didn't work correctly. However, after the beginning first months after mastering the program she found that using excel was simply and an efficient way to do some tasks of her job. Overall it then made her more efficient at doing her work and could focus more on different substantial topics rather than plugging and chugging numbers. It made her work more enjoyable than during the first few months, but did not really have an effect overall from before using excel spreadsheets.

In respect to this course, I think that my mom's reaction to the implementation of excel in her office really shows that if she had not been exposes to computers before excel then the time it took her to learn the basic functions of the program would be a lot longer. Especially in today's society, I think it connects to Brandt's article because those who are exposed to computers and have the literacy skills to operate this machinery find it easier to adapt to new programs and skills.

From this I definitely agree that implementing a technology system into any workplace is going to be difficult and take time to manage, even simply technology. I can remember when I worked as a hostess at a restaurant in high school and they went to a completely automated reservation system. By switching to this system, it took a lot of time for myself and other employees to do basic tasks that were actually faster to do just by hand. However, after using the system for a couple of weeks I found that using the technology was extremely helpful and I could do my job more productively and accurately.