It never ceases to amaze me how much people can get involved in things that really aren't all that important.

The other botanists who work here (all the juniors, like me, anyway) have spent the last hour arguing about the best way to fill in and enter site sheets.

The front pages of site sheets are easy - you tick a page full of boxes, basically. Still, people forget, or use "/" to mean 'over' instead of 'and' in their vegetation descriptions, or they tick several non-complementary boxes (how can a site have both 'nil' rocks and 'continuous' rocks, I ask you), but generally, the problems encountered on the front page pale into insignificance when compared to the second page.

On the second page, the stratum table has to be filled in. Basically, this is the representation on paper of the dominant plant species in each height category. Under this table is the species list table, where opion differs as to whether you write down everything in the site, or if you just write down the species you haven't collected, or just the species you haven't already written down or if you leave the whole fucking thing blank.

Don't even get me started on the TWENTY MINUTE ARGUMENT they just had on whether to write down the actual heights of the plants or whether they should just write the stratum the plant belongs in (e.g. shrub - which abbreviates to sh - 0.5-1 m, or tr <5m, and so on).

And the reason I'm not getting involved? It's not because I don't have an opinion because the whole thing is tiny and really meaningless. No, it's because I'm worried I'll lose it over the "/" being used to mean 'over' instead of 'and'.

I think I need professional help. Or I've just been entering site sheets for four days too long.