Thirsty

It was 10:30p.m. I was out with some workmates having some tasty Kölsch beer. My cell phone rang.

"REC, this is $GeneralSupportManager. Can you join a conf call with $LeadResourceManager, $DocManager, $PM-Guy and $OtherSeniorManager? We're discussing the Daylight Savings Time issues."

I had to go outside since the bar was too loud, in part due to a couple of my cow-orkers feeling some need to be especially noisy.

There's been a deluge of mail about this subject over the past few weeks. I've come into the office this week to find as many as 90 mails over four threads on the subject. Everyone else working on this is in California.

I've written a couple Urgent Notices, answered hundreds of cow-orker questions, discussed the issues ad nauseum, and now we have to have another conf call while I'm busy trying to get as much tasty Kölsch beer into me as possible so that I can, for a few minutes, forget the idiocy that is this DST change.

"Yeah, I can join."

I went outside in the cold an waited for the join.

The questions started coming, niggling details and references to mail from last week and there I stood in the cold with a small glass of beer, trying to remember what the hell they were talking about. And when one was finished hammering me, the next started. And every one of them was born to be mild, preferring to be "safe" and take as little action as possible.

Twenty minutes later, Stevie-boy came out with a sausage and a beer refill. The sausage was ice cold inside 10 minutes as I continued to explain how shit works and how it won't work on Sunday morning if things aren't done the way I say.

After an hour of this I took over, started telling each one of them what to do. I explained that while the newest document includes much uncertainty, it's the best we have so far. Failure to publish it immediately is guaranteed to have more repercussions than not publishing it. Likewise, I explained again to $GeneralSupportManager the importance of having every single monkey open up every single ticket that ever referred to DST and send a boilerplate I wrote explaining what steps must be taken. "You need to send that out NOW," I told him, "This minute, while we're still on the phone." If he'd had 15 minutes to mull it over -- as he did six hours earlier when I explained the reasoning in a long mail response -- he might've again decided to wait.

I got confirmation from $DocManager that my latest Urgent Notice would indeed be published immediately. That gives the US the last bit of Thursday and all of Friday to fix stuff. Asia and Europe only have Friday.

This morning I went to check my Urgent Notice in our Knowledge Base so I could finally start referring customers to it. Imagine my surprise when it wasn't there. Fuckwits. Utter, complete, total, fuckwits. I expect it from customers. I expect it from some of the cow-orkers. I don't expect it from a group of top management decision-makers, although that might help explain why $BigCorp got bought up by $MegaCorp, itself a steaming pile of inefficient bureaucracy... but that's the subject of another post.

I'd already expected to be available on Sunday to answer questions and problems which will come in, and I'll get a nice chunk of change. Thanks to these fuckwits not releasing the docs I'm actually going to have to work my ass off for the cash, all day and all night.

Thank fuck for Mini-Me. He's updating my customers so that I can leave this place, hop a plane to London, and get as much tasty Kölschbitter beer into me as possible so that I can, for a few minutes, forget the idiocy that is this DST change.

I'm outta here. London, here I come.

x-posted from HuSi, where there's a poll.