How many ways can you use Microsoft Excel wrong in just one job? Let me count the ways <https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_recruitment_blunder/> ... * A ranking column in the Wales region’s spreadsheet somehow got misinterpreted as an interview score. Since there were fewer candidates in that region than the minimum acceptable interview score, all candidates from there were deemed “unappointable”. * This scoring issue could have affected applicants across the country, since replacements would have been needed for the Welsh positions that became vacant. * To add to the difficulties, different regions used different conventions in their spreadsheet layout. Some tried to use VLOOKUP to guard against manual copy-paste errors (give them some credit there), but not everyone did. This kind of thing just added to the headaches in the merging process, which took several days of manual work. * After discovering their mistake, the recruitment office then tried to notify the wrongly-rejected candidates about the problem, and offer them jobs anyway. Unfortunately, due to a bug in the messaging system (OK, this wasn’t an Excel problem), the message went out to more candidates than intended. * All of this comedy of errors was kept quiet, until someone made a Freedom-Of-Information request.