Day 1.118: I don't believe IT

Let me tell you a story (that's what you're here for after all).

Once upon a time an engineer went on a business trip. When he got back to his office, he filled in a form describing his expenses, made a copy of his receipts, sent them off and received his money back.

Ha ha ha.

That is how our so-called system is supposed to work - except that:

1. The expense database is a separate web-application so I first have to find the email with the obscure web address and then spend half an hour recovering the password I haven't had to use for several months.
2. When I come to use the perfectly reasonable system for attaching my receipts (scan them then attach them as a PDF document), it gets stupidly, unnecessarily clever-clever:
   "To view these receipts...", this is not what I want to do - there are none yet, I simply want to upload some, "...you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed."
   There is one option - a link to the Adobe website. I already have Reader installed, so I assume this is a Microsoft conspiracy to stop me using Firefox and start-up Internet Explorer. Same thing. So I try to install Reader - 10 download minutes later - Adobe Acrobat Reader cannot be installed because a copy is already installed. Aargh.
3. After what feels like most of a day messing around I finally give up and email the PDF to our processing person with a very frustrated message.

That was yesterday.

Today I had a very sweet reply telling me that there is an 'easier way' to attach my receipts to the expense claim. I did not believe my eyes when I read it. All I have to do is:

1. Click on a link on the expense report to print out a cover sheet.
2. Print out my scanned receipts (or re-copy them)
3. Fax (FAX - seriously??) the cover sheet and the receipts to the California number on the cover-sheet.
4. It's bad so far - what is this the 1980s? - but this takes the biscuit (cookie?): the fax will be received, a bar-code on the coversheet will allow some software to automatically attach my receipts (turned back into a PDF presumably) to the expense claim.

I wish it was a joke - I have to print it and then fax it over an analogue telephone line so it can be re-digitised, have some rather clever software interpret it and attach it to my electronic expense claim. Really? Really. All because some web designer wrote broken code that won't let me attach a PDF unless it can tell that I can look at it again afterwards. If I want to. Thanks.