Beat Up

Its not often that I get beat up by work but today was one of those days. It actually started yesterday when we found out that I screwed up some international labeling over Christmas. I didn't realize that I was given only one of the two label artworks that I needed to do a job so I used it for both products. Opps! The FDA (and our European counterparts) hate labeling errors.

The reason that the error wasn't caught in-house is that I'm just too darned trust-worthy. Since it was my stuff it wasn't read as closely. That's rather a left-handed compliment but it certainly isn't making me feel any better.

In order to prevent this situation in the future I need to create a standard label (we were deviating from our norm) but the software I use has degraded to the point of insanity. It took me all day to create one of the four labels that I need and its still not as clean as it should be.

In discussion with the software technical support department I was notified that "yeah, that version was famous for these kinds of problems" and "its too old for us to even pretend to help you". "Please buy an upgrade and then we'll talk." An upgrade is typically $2K, today they want $6K. I have $0 in the budget for a software upgrade this year.

They released a brand new version (today) so its a two level upgrade. I can buy the one level but they will only support it for another 18 months (based on their track record that isn't long enough). I don't really want to be the first customer using a new release either, especially not in a manufacturing operation where all the labels print from that software and we just fired the only other person that really understood the program. No pressure.