A Ronulian Story: Sharon the Engineer

Ron is a real person and the inspiration for Rondays. A Ronulian is someone who is Ronlike.  A Ronduh is someone who put up with Rons. Happy Ronday!

Sharon was an engineer I worked with back when I was a document control specialist for a government contractor.

Every week, the engineers had to submit this excel spreadsheet report to my department. And every week, Sharon would have a problem getting her spreadsheet to work.

Now, I’m going to show my age a little here, but back when Sharon and I worked together, our computers were still using 5.25” floppy disks. So every week, I would put a copy of the excel spreadsheet on a 5.25” disk and give it to Sharon. She would do her report, print it out and turn it in. Then next week she would try to access her disk, and the file would be corrupted.

My boss and I couldn’t figure out what the problem was, so I was sent to personally deliver the disk to Sharon and make sure it worked. I watched Sharon as she opened the file and entered her information. I watched her enter and save the spreadsheet. I watched as she printed it out. I watched as she took out the disk. I made her put it back in and try to open the file again. I watched as the file opened up without any problem.

“Isn’t that the way?” she joked. “It always works when someone is standing over your shoulder and watching.”

I laughed with her. Then I watched as she took the disk out of the computer and stuck it on her metal file cabinet with a magnet for “safe keeping.”

“Uh, Sharon?” I began. “I think I figured out the problem . . .”