20 Things I Learned From Outages

  • Now is a perfect time to panic.

  • No matter what you may think, everyone knows it's your fault.

  • Everyone is always losing 'thousands of dollars' during outages.

  • When the network is down, you burn calories at an exponential rate.

  • People who haven't worked in the last year are suddenly desperate to get busy.

  • How many managers can you cram into your workspace?

  • When the network is down, you'll have your answer.

  • Manager love to take up space and offer valuable 'suggestions'.

  • Ignoring these 'suggestions' proves you don't have what it takes for management.

  • It also means the network might be fixed sometime soon.

  • No matter what, payroll gets fixed first. There is no exception to this rule.

  • The answer to all other inquires is, "Yea, I'm working on it."

  • Time passes in two modes during outages. 'The crawl' and 'freaky lighting mode'.

  • Freaky lighting mode is while you are troubleshooting.

  • The crawl occurs after you think you've fixed it.

  • More than likely, it's worse than you think.

  • Never say 'it's fixed.' This is a sure sign you have failed.

  • Once you send the 'all clear email', is when the second shoe will drop.

  • For some reason you never expect that second shoe. No matter how many times you've done this.

  • Get comfortable. You are probably going to be here for a while.
  • 2 comments:

    jenylu said...

    Sounds as if life has been a little rough lately -- upside is you got a post out of it and learned 20 things. Not to mention spend extra time with mangagers...

    Anonymous said...

    I could feel your tension! Hope things are better now.

    I purchased some software for our business and after 4 hours of frustration, finally called tech support. It took him another half hour to figure out I had a space in my file name, which mucked up the works. I thanked him for his time and told him he was extremely patient and kind. He stumbled over a "oh okay" and hung up. Not sure anyone ever thanked him before!
    Do you not get thanks you's?? If not...THANK YOU!!