I arrived at work to discover a server based problem in one of my
vendor hosted systems. When attempting a certain transaction customers
were hitting an undefined error screen. So, we did the preliminary
checks (where you quickly rule out obvious causes, document the error
conditions and sequencing, then capture the error itself), and then
notified the vendor. The vendors engineers jumped on it and resolved
it in about two hours - well within their service level agreements.
But, in the corporate world things tend to take on a life of their
own. My morning was spent answering many customer queries. For the
first half of the morning it was "yes, we are aware of it, yes we are
working to fix it, no we don't know when it will be fixed". Then the
second half of the morning was "yes, we are aware of it, yes, we fixed
it, and yes, we sent general system status notifications".
I swear I answered fifty variants of the same question. After I've
answered the same question the thirtieth or so time I have to start
resisting the urge to send out a general note that says something like
"we've successfully turned back the alien incursion, and we want to
insure you we remain in control of the corporate vending machine
network".
If you haven't watched it yet - I would like to recommend the comedy
show "Better Off Ted", which my dear Rae turned me on to. It is an
amusing sitcom and anyone who has ever spent time in corporate America
can definitely relate to it!
I've finished lunch (a mediocre turkey and white bean soup) and am now
ready to wander back to the office and tackle the rest of the day. I
am craving sushi for dinner, so that is my tentative plan once I make
it through the rest of this otherwise cool and beautiful Wednesday.
Sent from my iPhone
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