Passing the Buck

We are well over half way through the “off” season with nothing to report, at least nothing negative. The weather has been typically more winter-ish with very few warm stints or rain events. The result is a fairly deep fluffy snow cover and no obvious ice any where on the green surfaces….with the usual exception of the tarp on 15 G.  I’ve been out checking random green surfaces and all are still frozen which should mean good things for keeping disease under control but may mean a slow spring depending on how much spring heat we get.

The colder weather has definitely made me more lethargic and unmotivated and I find myself gravitating to those tasks that are mind numbing and repetitive. That being said I still try review the previous year and come up with ways to stream line things.

One thing I want to implement next year is a better record keeping system for fuel usage. At present we do this:

Staff Chicken Scratch

Each fall I interpret my staff’s hieroglyphics and manually enter fuel amounts into a spread sheet that looks like this:

Spreadsheet Showing 2017 Diesel Use

This coming year I want them to take some responsibility and will be asking them to enter information instead of me. I created two forms (one for diesel and one for regular fuel) that staff will fill in. By forcing the staff to choose from predetermined lists and not allowing any line to be left blank I hope the information they provided will be relevant year to year.

Most of my staff is great and will have no difficulties but there is an element that will be unhappy with the change, especially since that change involves a computer.  The other problem is the new process involves using an online form I created using Google Forms (another idea I stole while trolling around Twitter) and not everyone has a cell phone with a data plan that they want to use at work so I still have to figure issue that out. 

Go HERE to see how the “Regular Fuel” form works if you want to see what I set up. At the end of the form you can select "See previous responses" to see graphs of the data people enter. For the 2016 I went back and manually entered information to start to create a data base. The task of entering all the previous years info into the form was my way of testing out the form and to look for problem areas. I also asked Neil L to do the 2015 data so he could provide input and so I could see if it made sense to someone other than me.