In my five year of corporate work, this first week of August was, hands down, the most-nerve racking and most taxing. Many a times during this week, I wanted to succumb to the pressure and just explode with anger or fold up in utter frustration.
Yes, I was
thisclose to losing it. The harder part is that I have to appear “sane” because there are people who need my guidance. Me losing it is akin to adding fuel to an already scorching fire.
I’ve spent 3 months work of extra work in order to put in place a new system called SAP. August 1 is supposed to be D Day - the first day of go-live. I must admit we weren’t that ready despite being given a 1 month extension. But we carried on and decided that we will just solve the glitches as they come. For we won’t know what is wrong until we have tried everything under conditions of normalcy.
Like a precursor of bad things to come, I was hit by an ambulance on my way to the office, at the corner of Araneta and Del Monte. Stupid ambulance decided to go against the traffic, without a siren or even frantic honking. Since I was blindsighted by a jeep on my left, how was I supposed to know that there was an opposing ambulance when it was my lane that had the green light?
At early morning, it was sickening to hear the sound of metal crunching, no matter how slight. Thankfully, I just got a dented bumper and slightly scratched headlight. Plus a slight phobia whenever I pass through that area.
No surprise: stupid ambulance didn’t even stop to check and own up to the damage.
Now back to the main story. I reported early to work to prepare for the worst in our SAP Go Live. At the very first hour of go-live, we already experienced backlog when the system turned out to be slower than usual. Amidst entertaining panicked queries here and there, I had to stay calm and tried to motivate the increasingly distressed invoicing people. They, after all, have to deliver the ordered items by next day or risk paying penalty.
By lunch time, we have just processed a meager third of the normal volume of sales orders. I already joined in the encoding the orders, just to be able to forward as many orders as we can to Warehouse and Delivery. Quick lunch by 3pm.
By 10 pm, I heard the alarming news that the printing of invoices at our remote warehouse is failing. At a normal day, everything is done by 10pm (all next-day delivery already loaded in the trucked, complete with the requisite papers). I immediately shifted to Plan B and asked the warehouse people to go to our main office to print.
I needed to get a little snooze at past 12 midnight. When I opened my eyes, the warehouse people were already in our office. And so we continued processing the orders until morning of the next day.
To cut the story short, after 2 days of overnight operations due to backlog, we had to declare system failure and revert back (for now) to the original system. We will re-try again on September 1.
It goes without saying that I was depressed. The system failed and I take ownership of the work backlog (the domino effect of which took us one week to correct) and unprocessed sales orders. I was appalled to see some people cry from sheer frustration on the new system and I can’t blame them.
I was physically tired and mentally drained. You know how it feels when you have tried everything and still it wasn’t good enough. Part of me wished I can take everything back. But for now, all I can do is to ensure them that it won’t happen again.
In these trying times there are two things that kept me from going to the deep end. One is the Beth Orton song
Oooh Child. It made me look forward to the day when things are gonna be easier and brighter. When I’ll get it together and get it all done.
The last and the single most important thing is the fact that most people understood. Though I take full responsibility of what happened, it was comforting to know that people didn’t blame us. If anything, they acknowledged our hard work and the fact that no one wanted such system failure to happen. I didn’t hear one harsh word from our big bosses, even at the face of delivery penalty and lost sales. They were more concerned about our health since we have been working literally non-stop for 3 days.
In writing this, I am putting the last week behind and putting it in a drawer marked “experience” and “life lessons.”
Like phoenix, I am determined to rise from the ashes.