Tab Orders Matter (too)
The undeniable linkage between data entry and the conflicts of our time
Many years ago, when I was but a skinny, young and eager low-level manager (with hair) at a high-tech firm, I remember a particular conversation with an also young, slightly less eager programmer type (hair situation unknown) about an application we were creating. Note: When I say we, I mean him mostly. I wrote up what they wanted and he did the coding.
Anyway, I had stopped by to see how things were going when he excitedly asked if he could show me something cool he’d done in designing the form clerical staff would be using to key in customer information. I watched somewhat numbly as he showed me how he’d managed to code things so that when the person entering data hit the ‘tab’ button, the cursor would magically leap to the ‘next’ field on the screen. In his case, ‘next’ meant alphabetically. In case that doesn’t totally offend you, imagine that the cursor started in the ‘Address’ field, and after entering it and hitting the ‘tab’ button, it went to ‘city’, then ‘email’, ‘first name’ and then, possibly to ‘floor #’ or something like that. ‘Last Name’ an ordinarily very important field, had sadly been relegated to position 9 or 10 in tab order. From the perspective of my customer, it would have been a nightmare.
I like starting my articles with stories. Characters and a plot line make the articles easier to read in my opinion. At this point, however, you might feel a swelling of disbelief that I could have written an article about tab orders. Fair warning — that’s exactly what I’ve done. Read on.
It’s crazy but I recently heard Malcom Gladwell say that writing is about finding someone, inhabiting their world, and representing it to readers. And, that is my whole point. In the world of the administrator types who key in page after page of customer information in a day, tab order is everything. (Ok, it might not be everything. It’s probably less important than true love or a good donut, but it’s up there.) I’ve been told over the years that ‘inhabiting my customers world’, not physically, but understanding how and why they do what they do, made me uniquely helpful to them. I’m glad I’ve been able to give some people that sense of relief that comes with feeling ‘heard’, but I’m sad that it’s still unusual.
And now, here we are in 2020 in the USA. Because so many of us don’t want to learn how important tab order really is, we have a country that’s divided into warring factions. Blacks, whites, police, mask wearers, mask haters — none of us has a clue why some people are making such a big deal about tab orders. We don’t have a clue because we’re way too busy trying to make sure everyone else understands what WE think is important. (If you haven’t caught on — ‘tab order’ has morphed into a metaphor in this article. I’m not aware of a ‘Tab Orders Matter’ movement. Yet). The truth is, tab orders will never matter to most of us until we make an effort to inhabit the worlds of data entry clerks. We won’t understand how difficult it is to be black, or a policeman, or a medical worker, until we commit deeply to understanding (inhabiting) their worlds. And that means inhabiting, not the world we imagine or the world that has been described to us by biased ‘reporters of truth’, or even the world described by one individual, but the world as experienced by many. If that sounds tiring then I think we’re getting somewhere.
We have to care enough to take the time to learn about tab orders. I cared, in part, because I was getting paid for it, but also because I liked the people who were doing data entry all day and I wanted their lives to be easier. I care about black people, and policemen, and medical workers too, and even though nobody’s paying me (yet), I want their lives to be easier. And if anybody tries to organize their tab orders alphabetically, I want to be the one to stop them.
