Let's do the time warp

I'm an administrator of a budget and scheduling (like construction schedules) system. My main duties are insuring the data quality is maintained to a high standard and the users are following procedures.

We have a monthly process to status where the projects are as compared to the original plan.

The software uses what is called the "data date" as part of it's calculations. The data date represents the end of the business month. ____________________________

Yesterday one of the users comes to my office and tells me the system is all messed up. Specifically, the status schedules are showing the wrong dates.

I open the files and sure enough the dates are really strange looking. Things are statused ahead of the data date. I asked what she was doing when it happened.

She says "well, I saw that the data date was wrong, so, I changed it."

I take a look, and she has changed it to last months data date. When I asked why in the world she would change it to May month end, she says "well aren't we supposed to be statusing May right now?"

This lady (she's 66 by the way) truly believed that we were in the month of May, that yesterday was May 13th, and that someone had just put in the wrong data date.

She had gone 13 days of this month thinking it was May.

I explained to her and showed her the calendar that showed in fact that this is the month of June.

End result, she put her head on my desk and started crying. Realllly uncomfortable.

She went back to her office and I followed. I apologized for upsetting her. That's when I noticed her wall calendar with pictures of kittens was still on May. I changed her wall calendar to June for her.

Then I went to my manager to report myself for making someone cry.