Technology, (medium) old operator creates "gn incident"
Summary: ricarmic shared a humorous and frustrating experience about accidentally using the wrong measurement unit while weighing items on a new scale, which they later discovered was set to "grains" instead of "grams." This mistake led to discrepancies in weight calculations, affecting product shipments. Fortunately, the issue was resolved, but it highlighted the challenge of adapting to modern technology, especially during unexpected circumstances like recovering from COVID. msau4301 related to the technological challenges, sharing a similar story about struggling with settings on their own scale, showing empathy and adding humor to the scenario.
A while ago I had to upgrade one of my scales from the age old ones I'd been using to a modern one.
The new one is very good, was very economical but it does more stuff than my old ones!
A few weeks ago I was weighing out some stuff and I noticed the weight said "gn", I wondered whether it had always said that and subsequently for some unknown reason "accepted" it that way.
Ove the next days/weeks I was merrily weighing stuff out on it and the other scales. Most embarassingly I had a LOT of hints that something was amiss. Finally when I went to ship a box, the weight (I weigh them all ahead of time so I know what free/international shipping to include) said 1.5Kg (meaning that the actual weight was somewhere between 1.01 and 1.5 KG) and it only weighed (on a different scale) 890g which made no sense to me.
At this point I finally became enlightened and searched out the box with the "manual" for the scale. There was a long list of 9 different weight indicators and of course as everyone knows (😉) "gn" is for "grains". Turns out a grain is only worth .65 of a gram. So at some point I'd bumped the spot to change the weight (its all touchpad type stuff) indicator and it moved from "g" to "gn". During the "gn incident" I'd been weighing stuff on both gn and g scales so the master weights for stuff in grams were now 1/3 short if I used the "gn" scale and some "master weights" I'd created in "gn" instead of grams would have been a problem the other way.
Fortunately (as far as I know) all the master weights were easily fixable and the same "gn" scale was used to make the first batch of items.
The items created with the "gn"/"g" discrepancy I thought I had found and fixed all of them, but today a long time regular customer advised that their packages were "light" ie the count was short about a third. That was easily fixed, they were non confontational and sending the extras to fix it was no big deal.
This worries me a bit though, I don't really know how long the "gn" factor was there, I though I caught all the wrongly weighed packs but clearly I missed two. Hoping I don't get any more emails!
My only defense is that this all happened during my two week holiday in the last couple weeks of March which I got to spend recovering from COVID, it arrived for me 2 days before our 2 week holiday and my DS got it from me a couple days later. Our holiday became a "netflix holiday" as a result (I'm always processing material to sell when I'm watching TV).
Certainly it seems it sometimes is the "little things" that get you, what a problem that extra letter caused!
msau4301
·3 years agoThanks for making me smile! I can so relate as I am also "medium old" and technologically challenged. I am always in a panic when something changes/updates and I sit there like a deer in the headlights (albeit a cursing deer). Eventually I usually end up calling frantically to my kids, but Lord help me if they're at school.
I have a small scale I use almost daily and all is fine and dandy (I love that little Walmart scale) until the batteries die and replacing them sets it back to factory setting which sends me spiralling to find the correct setting on the tiny unit nub - which somehow hides the grams way, way, way, way down the line of options, sometimes I think they only show it every 30 or so tries!
It certainly can be the "little things", and having read Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, hasn't helped in the least!