FUCK! I HATE being told it's my call and then not being able to make it!

The BBQ Pit
1

We were supposed to switch to a new web-based course registration database as of January 1. The system was to be installed by December 1, so we’d have time to test it out.

I said to my boss, “At some point we’ll have to make a call whether to go to the new program or delay it and stick with the old.” My boss, “I’m comfortable with you making that call, Jim.”

December 1st comes… no program appears. I tell my boss we should stop right then. There won’t be enough time left to test it thoroughly. She hems and haws and we compromise. If it’s nor up in 2 weeks, we’ll hold off til next quarter.

December 15 comes, no program. I say essentially the same thing. My boss calls the marketing woman who’s the liason with the outside programmers. Her confidence is high. It’s almost done on the programmer’s server, there’s just some reports to finish. It’s being tested as it’s written at the other end. It will be ready by January 1. We can reach it at the programmer’s server and load in our course info even before it’s moved to our server…

So we do that, and load data in. Being that I’m not an idiot, I have our people ALSO load the info to the old system as a backup. More work, but it was a slack time.

December 30, and we hear that our IN-HOUSE programmer, will be gone for the next two weeks, so we can’t migrate it into out server and behind our firewall, so we can’t use it because there’ll be credit card info passing through it. New estimated date of “Ready to Use”, January 25, TODAY! Again I say to my boss, let’s use the old system until April. Our classes are quarterly, it’s a really bad idea to make this switch mid-quarter.

“No, we’ve publicized it. We have to get it going. People will be pissed at us.”

So last Saturday I spent a 12 hour day working with the programmers to transfer the data from the old system to the new, which is still on an outside server. Once I leave, all they have to do, they tell me, is copy it into our server.

This morning, I come in at 6:30, and NOTHING that I try works. Not a single report works, so I can’t even sample the data in the two systems to make sure it moved correctly. I make a dummy course registration, which SEEMS to work, but I can’t print a class roster or a financial report to see how it accounts for the money. Nor can I delete the dummy registration.

When the phone open at 8:00 and our phone people come in, I make a call in my boss’s absense. Don’t use the new system, we can’t tell what it’s doing.

My boss comes in a 9:00. I talk to her. She talks to the marketing woman, who talks to the programmer, etc. Ultimately, the word comes back. Keep using the new system, the reports will work by the end of the day.

Some of them do by midafternoon. We learn that anyine who signed up for 2 seats (for them and a spouse or child) in a class has been given 4 seats in the new system. We learn that the system designed to allow us to give discounts doesn’t work. We learn that it ignores the maximum class size number, so we can overfill a class without even a warning from the system.

But we can still register people and we are still using it. By the time I left, after an 11 hour day today, we’re assured it will all be fixed by morning.

Sure.

Fuck! My boss has repeatedly told me she trusts my judgement. I tried to make the call, and I made the RIGHT call, but it wasn’t allowed to stand.

Fuck!

2

Oh yeah, and though the programmer SWEARS he did nothing but copy the data out of the old system, he BROKE it. We couldn’t even look up info in the old system til 2 PM.

My worst total clusterfuck day since I started, and we could have prevented ALL the problems we hit.

3

Hey, you made the call. That’s Important. A big call had to be made and you made it.
You never know what’s going to happen after you make a call. Some people would run in circles like headless chickens, or hide in the toilet, and not make a call at all. The important thing is having had the stones to Make The Call, and you did that.

Kudos. Chill. :slight_smile:

4

Yeah man, it’s just your job. What if you quit right now? Wouldn’t that totally screw them? In fact, that’s what I think you should do. Quit. No two weeks notice. Just leave 'em high and dry. You can find something better.

5

Over the years, I’ve learned when I have reservations about something, I get or put it in writing. Shit travels down, and if your boss comes under the gun, you’re the one shit-shot.

Especially when you are a passive rather than emphatic type, your protestations may often be ignored because they are not deemed to be voiced strongly enough.

It may have ultimately been your boss’ decision to bring the new system online, but she was over-anxious to do so and wasn’t really listening to you. If you had put your thoughts in a memo to her, she would have had to stop and read it, and often, the written word gets your point across much more succinctly, whereas verbally, you may seem to be waffling.

You may still be able to turn the tide a bit if you feel you may have need of a pooper-scooper in the near future. Write a memo detailing the current problems, reminding her of your prior reservations about the readiness of the new system, and try to offer suggestions for interim damage control.

Good luck.

6

OK, here’s what you do…

Ah, shiite. Cillasi beat me to it. In short, always put stuff like this in writing.

  1. It covers your ass
  2. It helps you remember
  3. It helps you make your case more clearly and succinctly

You still might want to write out the chain of events ( but not in some internet posting) while they are still fresh in your memory. Dig deep into your memory: if something comes back in a month or three to bite you in the ass about this situation, you would be far better prepared if you could go back to your documentation than you would be if you had to remember all this stuff.

7

Getting things in writing from your boss usually does cover your ass. But sometimes it covers it with a bullseye.

8

All too true. Well put Lib.

Sorry you’ve had such a rough time yojimboguy, but don’t kick yourself too hard.

9

So I’m sittin’ here 4 PM Friday and already guzzling a beer and working towards a buzz.

The finance guy calls today. “So I hear you have the new registration system going. How are the financial reports looking?”

“The reports weren’t online til Wednesday afternoon, and I haven’t run them yet. On the first day, we had transactions we aren’t sure whether they went through or not on the new system, and we had to combine the old and new system. we commingled money from them because we had to receive payments into something, but half the things are broke. So I have these two boxes of cash, checks and credit card slips growing in the desk, because I don’t know what to reconcile them against. I haven’t had a chance to even think about how to fix the money part, I’ve been working real hard about getting other broken things fixed.”

So we talk and it’s a pretty useful talk. The amount of commingled money in question only amounts to a few hundred bucks, and he suggests some approaches to process it. At worst the hospital has a “miscellaneous revenue” income category that we can dump a few hundred bucks into if we can’t precisely account for it.

And now I’m back home. I brought home a bunch of printouts related to fixes I can make, or registrations that I should be able to put through now that the bugs that preventing them earlier have been fixed. I can Citrix into the network from home, and try to catch up.

But not tonight.