Rare Display

Today, I had a rare display of strong emotion at work. That is so unlike the cool, calm, unflappable me. I was so angry I kicked my desk drawers and dustbin several times. Nobody noticed. But one of my coworkers heard the commotion. I am feeling a little silly and immature about it now. But at that time, I was boiling and seething. If an enemy had shown up and irritated me at that moment, I would have picked him up and broken him in two.

What happened was that, a support guy came to my desk to help fix a minor issue with my laptop... more specifically, my Windows profile In the process, he did not fix the issue, but ended up deleting my Windows profile... essentially wiping out all the custom settings, bookmarks and shortcuts I had on my machine. Most importantly, he deleted a file which contained important information for my new home mortgage loan application process and appointment. After he was done deleting, I was left with nothing. Not even the phone number of the loan officer I was supposed to meet tomorrow. Fortunately, I was able to Google and then make 2-3 phone calls before I was transferred to the loan officer, who re-sent most of the information to me.

Right now, it looks like all that volcanic emotion was unnecessary. But at that time in the morning, I was feeling very edgy. Two reasons for that:

1. Like most IT people who have great confidence in the simple steps of computer operation, the support guy at my desk did not take one or two simple precautions which could have saved my data. I am actually lucky that he did not end up deleting some really critical, unrecoverable data.


2. At that point of time, I had lost important information about my mortgage loan appointment. I did not know how easy or quick it was going to be to get it again. It was the busy time of the day for me at work. I also wanted to call my real estate agent ASAP and share the information with him. And I knew that I'd feel like a fool to call the loan officer and ask her to repeat all the information she had given me less than one hour back (this is what I had to do finally).


3. The more important reason for my anger is that what happened today is part of a bigger problem. My new employer's IS systems and processes have fumbled and botched at every step in converting me from a contractor to a full time employee. The bungling has been unbelievable and indicative of very immature processes. Things are not only botched, they are done at a really slow pace.

I was really tempted to shoot off an angry mail to the support guy's supervisor. I am glad that I didn't. I would have regretted that even more than I regret the kicking of my desk and dustbin. Yes, the guy made a silly error. But that's no big deal. He has already learnt his lesson. However, I definitely need to give feedback about the overall lack of process maturity. Meanwhile, I hope to god there are no more emotional outbursts at work!

Update on April 2nd, 2006: Last Monday, we had a staff meeting with the VP who asked us to send him an email about one major bottle-neck we have seen at the workplace. I emailed him about the issues with IS Support. Meanwhile, the deletion of my profile screwed up something which is preventing me from using some of my applications. I have reported it to IS Support. They are yet to fix it for me!