Monday - 5.00 am. Awoke to the alarm clock, the most hated sound in the world apart from The Husband’s iPhone message tones. I arrived at work at 6.45 am to try and get a bit of work done before the teams arrived and started to use the new POQS system. There were bound to be teething problems, there always were when IT did anything to the systems. I couldn’t sign into my lap top; it told me my account had been “locked out”. Perfect start to the day. I phoned the systems helpdesk and selected the option for account lock outs. I thought I’d got through to someone, but it turned out to be an automated voice telling me that for account lock outs I had to go into the internet site and reset myself. It then cut me off.
Just how was I supposed to access the internet site when I couldn’t log in to any systems? I phoned back and selected the option for new faults. I waited in a queue for ages, before finally getting through to a human. Well, sort of. I told him my account was locked out. He started to tell me that I needed to reset myself on the internet site in such a disinterested tone that I thought for one moment I’d got the automated voice again.
“And how am I supposed to do that when I’ve just told you that I’m locked out of my system?”
“You need to log into a colleague’s system and access the site that way.”
“What colleagues? It’s only twenty past seven, there’s no one else here yet.”
“Oh.” Big sigh. “Well, I’ll do it this once but next time you’ll have to-”
“Yes I know,” I snapped, “I’ll use the bloody internet site.”
There was a long silence. “Hello, are you still there?” I asked eventually. “Hello?”
“Yes,” said the android, “I’ve reset you. Your temporary password is ‘password’. You’ll have to change it when you log in. In about 30 minutes time.”
“Sorry, what? Why 30 minutes? Don’t tell me I’ve got to wait thirty minutes before I can log in.”
“Yes, the system updates itself every 30 minutes. You should be alright by 8.00-ish. Probably. If not, by 8.30.”
Just great. I get myself up at the crack of a sparrow’s fart to get a head start on the day and I can’t do a damned thing. What an absolute waste of time; not even the canteen was open yet. Jim the cleaner walked through the department. “Morning Sam!” he called. “Morning Jim,” I said, not bothering to correct him. He came over to tell me all about the bodily fluids he’d just had to scrape off the walls of the cubicles in the Gents toilets. Ugh, gross. Why are you telling me this? But at least this place was clearly exciting to somebody.
The early shift started to arrive just before 8.00. Unlike me, they managed to access their systems ok. The first calls started to come in and I hovered nervously, watching them use the new quotation system. Everything seemed to go ok - the system appeared to be working well. This could be a miracle in the making - had IT implemented a new system without any hitches? It all looked good! I felt like dancing a jig of joy around the department.
The first telecon with IT and the project team, (who I’d stupidly thought would be conspicuous around the sites today to support us with the new system - oh silly me) was at 9.00 am. I reported that all was working well. Even I had eventually managed to get into my system.
The telecon ended and I saw an email come in from The Climber, who was sat twenty feet away. Don’t get up will you, you lazy cow. It was headed: Problem with customer details. She’d written that one of her sales team had come across a customer’s policy which had information missing from the system. It was only one policy, probably some random glitch, so I emailed her back and told her to keep her eye on it. I went over to the canteen and bought a tray of whopping cappuccinos for myself and the team managers to celebrate the successful implementation and to recover from the early start. When I got back to the department, The Rock was waiting for me, looking concerned. Oh no, what?
“Kate, the guys have noticed a few anomalies,” she said. “We’ve had a couple of calls from customers wanting to change their addresses and when we’ve gone into the system, their policies aren’t showing.”
“Do you mean some of their details are missing?” I asked, thinking of The Climber’s email.
“No, I mean their policies aren’t showing at all. They can’t be found.”
I felt an icy hand clutch at my insides. I asked The Rock to show me an example. She was right: she searched the system but the policies could not be found. As I was stood at her desk, another advisor came over to report the same issue.
“Do you think it’s anything to do with the new quotation system?” asked The Rock anxiously.
“Well, it shouldn’t be,” I said, “it’s a different system, but they are linked and it’s too much of a coincidence that we’ve gone live this morning and we have these issues. I’ll have to phone it in.”
“What are we going to tell these customers?” asked The Rock.
“Take all the details, tell them there’s a fault and we’ll call them back as soon as it’s corrected.”
I phoned the project team and got Lisa-the-weasel. I told her we had several customers’ policies that had disappeared from the system.
“Can’t be anything to do with POQS,” she immediately snapped. “It must be a separate issue. You’ll need to report it in the usual way through the IT helpdesk, not the project team. It’s nothing to do with us.”
“With respect, Lisa,” you weasley little shit “it’s far too much of a coincidence for this issue not to be connected - you need to report it to the IT guys, this is a very serious issue - customers’ policies have disappeared.”
The Weasel refused, saying it “wasn’t possible” for the issues to be connected to the project and rang off. For the second time that day, I had to phone the IT helpdesk. I selected the option “new fault” and waited in a queue - again. As I was waiting, The Rock came over and mouthed at me that she’d had three more customers who had vanished. When I got through to someone, they told me I had to report the fault on the new online IT internet site. I had a complete diva-like hissy-fit melt down - and they hung up on me.
I entered all the details of the issue into the online form on the internet site. It wanted to know the ins and outs of a duck’s arse - it took me twenty minutes. Just when I’d hit submit, The Climber emailed again. Why couldn’t she get off her backside and walk the twenty feet to come and talk to me? She’d had another couple of examples where policies had some customer information missing. This was turning into a nightmare.
The next telecon was due at 10.30 and by then we’d had over twenty cases of disappearing policies or missing information. When I dialled in, I told IT and the project team about the two issues. They said “Why the hell didn’t you tell us earlier?” It gave me great pleasure to tell them I’d reported it to the Weasel about an hour ago. I knew she was on the telecon but she chose not to say anything. IT were initially in denial “It can’t possibly be connected”, followed by much disagreement, and general willy-waving until eventually someone (a woman) said they would undertake some urgent investigation.
I asked for their definition of “urgent”, knowing that IT’s definition differs from everyone else’s, usually by about ten years or so. The woman who had spoken, Mo, said she would do it now and report back at 11.30. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about. I asked the project team what they wanted us to tell our customers. Silence. They often forgot that we had real live customers; it was so long since any of them had actually spoken with one. We agreed that my guys would keep all the details of the affected policies with the aim of calling our customers back. I reminded them that the longer they took to investigate and fix the issue, the more call backs we would have to make. I was worried this was all going to turn into a big horrible beastie.
11.30 telecon. 45 cases reported. Mo from IT told us the issues were “almost certainly” connected to the POQS implementation, but further investigation was required.
12.30 telecon. 71 cases reported. Mo from IT told us that she had identified ??
?about 1000” policies whose data had been corrupted by the POQS system, and a load of other technical gumph that no one really understood. She didn’t have a fix for it yet. The project team demanded to know how this had happened. IT didn’t seem to know.
2.00 telecon. 117 cases reported. Mo from IT told us that she had identified a further 5000 policies that were affected. No fix yet. I told them that the number of call backs required was getting out of hand. There was general panic. The project team were very angry and wanted answers. IT didn’t have any. I asked why this issue hadn’t been picked up in testing? No one knew.
3.00 telecon. 138 cases reported. Mo from IT told us she had identified a further 3000 affected policies. From what I could ascertain from the IT-speak, she seemed to be saying that there was no fix available. Everyone agreed this was unacceptable and tempers were beginning to fray.
4.00 telecon. 156 cases reported. Mo from IT didn’t join the telecon. Someone went to try and find her. The project team argued amongst themselves about who was going to give the Big Cheese the “heads up”, in other words, tell him that 9,000 customer policies had gone missing. They agreed someone from IT should tell him, and decided it should be Mo, as she would be able to explain the technical detail to him.
5.00 telecon. 168 cases reported. Mo from IT said she’d found another 3000 affected policies, taking the total to 12,000. She sounded a bit weepy. She said the team were working on a fix; they’d update us at 6.00.
I phoned Brett the Boss to tell him what was going on. He said “I know, it’s a shitter” before ringing off saying he didn’t want to miss the start of the quiz night at the Hat and Feather.
6.00 telecon. 171 cases reported. Mo from IT said they had identified a possible fix which they were going to try to implement overnight. One of the project managers wanted to determine the “confidence level” of the fix working. Mo wouldn’t commit, but he kept on and on pressing. Mo lost it in the end and shouted “I’d feel a lot more confident if you bastards shut the fuck up and let me go and sort it!” We all quickly agreed this was a sensible course of action.
Tuesday
5.00 am. Woke and checked mobile. There was a text from the IT team. The overnight fix hadn’t worked. Oh God. There was also a text from Brett the Boss, which had come through very late last night. It read: “Do u no wot is the capitol of namibia?”
I heaved myself out of bed to face the horrors of another day. I tried to creep about quietly, but I woke up The Husband when one of my bra straps pinged off, catching me in the eye and I’d cried out in pain. He had bad-temperedly muttered “For Christ’s sake, why are you going in at this time again?” I don’t think he was expecting an explanation, so I didn’t offer one.
I arrived at work to find an email in my inbox from the Communications team with a “personal” message from the Big Cheese which had been sent to all colleagues. “I am delighted and proud to announce the successful implementation of the Perypils Online Quotation System. Well done to the project team for all their hard work and superb efforts - this is a triumphant uniting of technology and leading the business through change.... ”
There was no mention of the 12,000 or so missing policies and I doubted my poor team would see it as a triumph. They were already calling it “that poxy system”. The day staggered on as a virtual repeat of yesterday, with useless telecons with IT and the project team on the hour, every hour.
I had to get Martin The Drain to dial into one for me when I was double-booked and as I passed by his desk he put himself on mute and begged “Please kill me.” IT could not seem to find a way to fix the issue. My guys were still receiving calls from customers with missing policies and by midday the number stood at 250. The customers who had called us yesterday were beginning to call us back to complain that we hadn’t called them back. I asked the project team what they wanted us to tell these customers. They didn’t have a clue.
I eventually managed to get hold of Brett the Boss after leaving messages all morning.
“Brett,” I said, “I really need some support with this one. We’ve got hundreds of customers we don’t know what to do with; no guidance from the project team and IT can’t seem to find a fix. There’s 12000 policies affected, it’s a monster. I need your help please, I need you to get involved.”
“Right,” he said decisively, like a superhero about to sweep into action, “Leave it with me; I’ll get back to you.”
I called my team managers together to update them with the situation. They were all extremely stressed as call volumes were creeping up and so were the complaints. The Climber said the project team were “all completely useless” pot and kettle and The Rock said IT were about as much use as a fart in a thunderstorm. The Drain was in a right old flap and I had to calm him down before he combusted. As it was he had to get up quickly to dash to the loo, the old irritable bowel flaring up again. I told the guys not to worry; Brett was on the case and would help us sort this out. I received a text from Brett. It said: “Have arranged for PM to call u.”
Was that it? Was that the sum token of his involvement? I assumed by PM he meant the Project Manager and not the Prime Minister. My mobile rang. I answered it wearily. It was the Weasel.
“Kate,” she said, “Brett’s asked me to call you, although I don’t know what I can add when you’ve been on all the telecons so you know the current situation just as well as I do.” I’d like to have spoken to the organ grinder not the monkey’s weasel.
“We need someone to take control of the situation,” I said, quite calmly for me I thought. “That’s why I wanted Brett to get involved. Decisions need to be made. We can’t just leave customers to complain, it’s not fair on them or on my guys. And why isn’t anyone from the project team here on site to support us and to see the issues first hand? It’s not good enough.”
The Weasel started to mutter that they were only a small team, they couldn’t be everywhere, but I cut her short and asked her to go back and talk to Brett. She rang off in a strop. I dialled into the 2.00 telecon. Mo from IT broke the news that there was no workable solution. We asked her what that meant. She said: “It’s completely buggered and can’t be fixed.” The project team started squawking like a load of old hens, but Mo stood her ground, simply repeating that there was no fix. I eventually managed to get a word in and asked what this meant for all the affected customers. Mo said all their policies would have to be manually loaded back on. One of the project team asked “Is that something your guys could pick up for us, Kate?” Oh why yes of course, no problem! Of course we can handle 12000 additional pieces of work just like that, no worries at all; if we start right away we should get it finished inside of five years. I did a quick calculation.
“Well, on average, it takes about 20 minutes to manually load a policy onto the system. So... that’s about 4000 hours of additional work. My team’s not in a position to support that sort of-”
“Well, they could work overtime,” cut in one of the project managers. Dickhead.
I said “Ok, but, sorry what was your name? Oh, it’s Richard, is it Dick for short by any chance? Well, it’s going to take ages to get through that volume of work on overtime alone, and until all the policies are loaded back on customer complaints will keep coming in. Not to mention the overtime bill, which will run to thousands, and who is going to pay for that? I certainly haven’t got the budget.”
“Well, it will have to come from IT’s budget,” said Richard, “it’s their cock up.”
“But we don’t have any budget for this sort of thing,” said Mo, “it would have to come from the project.” The row that ensued was interrupted from a terrible northern roar which reverberated down the phone line.
“For the love of Jesus H fucking Christ! What kind of inane bloody bullshit is this? I have never heard such a load of incompetent, useless claptrap in all my bloody life!” It was the Big Cheese. He had been listening in to the telecon without anyone knowing. There was a deathly silence.
“Lo
ad 12000 policies back on? You’re all talking out your bloody arses, that’s what you’re doing. Who’s using the IT brain cell today? You bloody well find a fix and find it quick, d’you hear me? That’s what you’re paid for, that’s your fucking job, so if you want to keep it, you’d better sort this pile of shit out. And as for you bone idle, useless project dickheads, you get yourselves off your big fat arses and get out to the sites to see for yourselves what your fuck up has done. Do you hear me?” He was worked up to a frenzy. “So get off this fucking phone and GET IT FUCKING SORTED!”
We all hung up. There were no more teleconferences. I received an email from the Weasel saying she would be down on site tomorrow. Then I received one from Brett the Boss saying he would be down on site tomorrow. It was like waiting for a bus...
Chapter Nineteen