Had a Bad Day

This was a tough week. I was sick but had to work. There was a very complex large problem that I needed to solve. I spent 12 hours working on Tuesday. Other people on my team had severe trouble with their work, so they needed help from me. I was hoping that today would be a quiet Friday.

By the time I woke up, I had a lot of phone messages. I could not listen to them because my home phone and cell phone were ringing. Those team members that needed help before were stuck. Their fix did not work and the customer was pissed.

I wanted to go into work and help out the team. My boss told me we did not have time for that. I had to log in from home and figure out what was up. Eventually I discovered what was wrong. By then I had missed breakfast and lunch. Epic work fail. This was not even my work. The peeps on my team had fallen down and could not get up.

Family Meeting Night

Some time ago, Momoko instituted family meeting night. This is some time we set aside each week for each cat to bring up family issues they want to address. At first Little Kat said these meetings were no fun. We were bringing up problems all the time.

Tonight I was happy to see that Momoko let Kit Kat run the meeting. Normally Momoko calls the meeting to order and runs the thing. The other nice thing about tonight was that Little Kat was able to vocalize some ways the family was changing that he did not like. Most of his issues were addressed. And some actions were assigned to family members. That's how business is done.

We are getting better at boxing in the time spent at family meeting night. Normally Little Kat is the time keeper. He sets a physical timer that rings when the time runs out. This helps us make sure we don't spend all night in a family meeting. It seems family meeting night is turning out almost as good as family game night. Maybe I will share some fun from those nights in a future post.

The Customer Building

At work, our customer is having some problems with our software. This is nothing new. However the customer informed us that these problems are critical. They can’t wait to get them fixed. My boss told them I would take care of this. I asked the customer to work closely with me so that I will not waste any time. One member in our customer organization is retiring this month. We were all going to be in the same building for the retirement party. I planned to meet somebody from the customer organization there to work with me on their problem.

Here is the chief reason I don’t like working at the customer organization. There is just not enough parking. If you do not get there early, you do not get to park. The traffic is crazy during rush hour around here. The day of the retirement party was no different. I got onto the highway, and found it to be more like a parking lot. Luckily I left really early in the day. I did end up getting a space in the parking lot.

When I got to the front door, I had to get somebody to escort me. I called one of the employees of my company who always works on site there. He was not there. But he promised he would call somebody else to sign me in. Nobody came. Luckily one of my actual customers came in and saw me detained at the front door. She signed for me. That got me in.

I had scheduled a meeting with the customer who was to help me around lunch time. So I had to get an early bite to eat. The problem is that because I am a visitor, I need an escort at all times. Everybody is busy. Nobody wants to escort me around. So I had to take a chance and sneak down to the cafeteria. I took along a folder that served two purposes: (1) It helped cover up the escort required badge around my neck, and (2) it contained a list of everybody’s phone number in case I was detected and escorted off the premises.