It was a perfect storm. Or maybe just a regular storm whose time was overdue.
I had been at my current job for almost seventeen years. Like most of us it wasn’t a job I loved or was passionate about, but it was tolerable and (mostly) paid the bills. A year earlier they sent us to work from home due to el covido and a few months later decided to close the office and have us work from home permanently. Personally I don’t think that working from home full-time is a viable long term solution unless the office makes a very intentional effort to communicate. My former office has yet to make the transition. In an office environment the managers would be in their continual meetings and in between meetings, while on their way to get coffee or water or whatever it is managers drink, they would see the unwashed minions and recall something in the meeting that should be told to the employee(s) so projects could go smoothly. This didn’t always happen in the virtual environment. That’s domino 1.
Like most non-rich people I turn our heat down at night during the winter months. The only place for my work desk, without disrupting our entire household (we homeschool so everyone is always home), is in the basement. Heat rises, cold air sinks, and in the morning when I started work in the winter it was 60 degrees. So I would work with a blanket wrapped around me for a good part of the day. Even in the summer it barely gets over 68 in our basement and due to the open construction of my working space, a space heater won’t work because the heat would all rise to the upper floors. I suffered through one finger-numbed winter working in the basement but did not want a repeat for year ad finitum. Domino 2.
Domino 3 is that a long-term co-worker left for another job in January, about nine months into working from home. She did a lot of the initial set up and posting reconciliation when a new firm came on board. I was the steps in between, taking all the raw historical files from the client, checking for missing files, doing a bit of updates as needed to fit our format, and generally making sure all the data got posted to the clients database*. My manager must have assumed that I knew everything she did. Also it had been over two years since we last did an implementation so you know how infrequently used instructions tend to slip from your mind. Domino 3
At the beginning of 2021 we had a new firm to implement, I was getting extra work from the co-worker leaving, I was frequently very cold**, and things were brought up in meetings that I wasn’t told. Also did I mention that since the last implementation they had gotten rid of Account Executive positions? In the past Account Executives would monitor the implementation and kind of act like project managers. They knew the data and the client and would check that it looks reasonable. I don’t know the data but I know the files… domino 4? Anyway the implementation was the usual “rush, they need it now!” I spent a ton of time adding and updating codes to the client database so their data would post because one part of our process is broken. There’s no urgency to fix it because it normally is only used with new firms. I thought I pulled a rabbit from the hat and was able to get their files scrubbed and posted by the deadline, even with a lot of missing code research. Huzzah for me! I felt like I accomplished something big but I didn’t get any kind of thanks from anyone.
Because I had so little time to get the work done and was so focused on fixing code errors so the data would post I didn’t notice that there very few reconcile errors. Clients can have us reconcile their data, like a bank statement, or just have us push it in there. The client I used as a template was our biggest client so I figured they were set up correctly (if in doubt on a code, we always use the code in this client because they have been heavily researched and analyzed). It turns out they were a “push it in there” client, a setup step the former coworker would have done and no doubt done correctly. Due to low staffing (layoffs) no one checked my work and it wasn’t noticed until a month or so later when the client began to review the data. They were not pleased and my manager was not pleased and he let me know. “I expect more from a senior level person,” said my manager.
Then one Friday afternoon a week or two later my manager sent an instant message to me, asking if I added a record to an obscure table of a database that we used to process the data for this new client. I hadn’t even heard of this table and there was just one very specific record in it with a code I’d never heard of. I replied “No” and he replied “Yes, you did. This caused [specific technical problem with the new client.] We’ll talk about this on Monday.” And that was that. I sat there flummoxed and then did some digging. It turns out the database with the obscure record was copied from another database and this record IS used in the original database. But whoever copied the database didn’t clear out the tables and this record sat, waiting like a landmine until enough new clients were added so that it matched up. It matched up with this particular already upset client.
Even though my manager didn’t discuss the item with me on Monday (or even directly ever again***) I can point to this exact exchange as the moment I knew my time there was over, that it was time for a change.
* Most of my work involved the raw files coming from clients and make sure the data was correctly changed and placed into the client database. It was extremely rare for me to use the app, review any of the reports generated from the data or review the data once it made it into the client database. There was plenty to keep me busy on the front end so I just didn’t work on those kinds of tickets. As far as my fifteen years of experience with “posting” was concerned, my work was done with it made it into the client database.
** Did you know that it’s difficult to concentrate when your fingers a numb? Go figure! It’s also difficult to concentrate when you homeschool and have four children frequently thunking over your head.
*** The problem was brought up in conversations about the poor client implementation, but he never addressed the cause. On Monday I told him what I found without a response. I guess he expected me to scour established databases for rare records. Or maybe he expected that with severely limited resources and a time crunch that I would change up how I’ve successfully completely about forty implementations in the past and begin to scrutinize the data, something the Account Executive would have done and caught. While I’m at it, another issue that I apparently failed on was an established data set where I check for completeness via sequential suffix numbers. If none are missing then we are not missing any files. Or at least that’s how it’s been for the past fifteen years and 40+ implementations. This bozo client decided to not receive pricing files. Since these files were never sent they weren’t assigned a suffix number and thus weren’t missing. How the client was able to even use this data without a price file is a mystery. But, you know, a senior level person should have caught that. Do you know who would have caught that? An Account Executive who was running test reports in the app. See asterisk 1 above.
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