Sweet . . .

Several weeks ago I was asked to help someone in my company create some forms. I work for a rather small company ~ 90,000 employees. I am a very small cog in a very big machine.

I was more than happy to help out with the request, I had nothing really important going on at the time. My co-worker was introduced to Google Apps, more specifically Google Docs. My group has a pilot for Google Apps and we had some extra licenses laying around, so I created my co-worker an account.

The company I work for uses Lotus Notes or Survey Monkey for most of its survey needs. It was nice to show someone something new. I was asked to replicate a questionnaire that was given to me in a pdf file. It took me about 10 minutes to do so and I shared the spreadsheet with the co-worker. Fully expecting to never hear anything again, 2 week go bye and I check the document history, I am still the last one who has viewed the doc. I give the co-worker a call and leave a message asking if they plan on using the survey I created. If not then was going to delete my co-workers account but save the spreadsheet and file it away.

I get no response, but the next day I see a department wide e-mail asking everyone to fill out a survey. To my credit I did not laugh too loud when I realized it was my questionnaire. The best part is since I am the document creator I can see the responses, do not worry everything in the survey is public data and I could not get someone in trouble even if I tried. Plus Google Docs has a full document editing history so if I do change anyone's response there is a log that I was the one who did it.

This is just my little victory dance that something I did was actually used. Too many days I feel like some peon in my little grey cube, which is probably exactly what I am. This is just me happy that I was able to influence "The Man".