A_Certain_Lack_of

What Day Is It?

I recently stayed at a certain hotel on business travel. They had just installed a new computer system (foisted upon them by the owning corporation): the old system was still on the desk (being eyed longingly by the clerk). Anyway, on the day I checked out, the poor desk clerk pressed key after key going through screen after screen (several minutes elapsed) just to get my receipt printed out (this isn't the worst part). When it finally did print, it looked something like this:

03/10/99    Room Tax               $XX.XX

03/10/99    Room charge            $XX.XX

03/11/99    Room Tax               $XX.XX

03/11/99    Room Charge            $XX.XX

03/13/99    Room and Tax for 3/12 $XX.XX

03/13/99    Room Charge            $XX.XX

The clerk, somewhat exasperated, made sure he pointed out that the charges for the last night's stay were marked with the wrong date but that the comment showed the correct date. Obviously, some overly-precise programmer who couldn't think of a better way had to put the date of the payment in the date column for the last night's stay. Seems like you should be able to print whatever you want in the date column ("Flintstones" for instance) and still save it to the accounting database correctly.

Submitted by: Owen J. Mortensen