“It’s the professional’s job to make the best of the situation.” These words - my own words – struck with me after my conversation with Jake. My motivation had slipped noticeably at work after weeks of absurdity. Maybe I needed to try harder.

Against my better judgment, I volunteered for this project that I thought could really help the office. The goal was to convert the office to an electronic document management system, DocuWiz. Paper was easily lost both in the filing cabinet and in transit, whereas electronic files could be searched, routed, and tracked. All that was needed was someone to install and setup the program. Sounded simple enough. Little did I know that this decision would change my life forever. There were plenty of red flags along the way, but I ignored them. The project was almost DOA because the managers couldn’t agree to buy the software for weeks. With only days remaining before the end of the fiscal year, they finally agreed, and there was a mad scramble to get the purchase order released. Installation was an adventure in itself. Vince “Flash” Horton, the head of IT, told me that was no server to put the program on. Why did he approve the purchase of software that he knew could not be installed? Because he’s Flash. I gave him that nickname after he asked, “You can fit all that data on that little thing?” when someone wanted to buy several USB drives. Legend had it that he was pretty good…with mainframes in 1985. Too bad his brain stopped working since then. Fortunately I had this covered. Before we purchased DocuWiz, I had verified with his more knowledgeable staff that we had servers capable of running it. I forwarded these emails to Flash, but it took another two months to finally corner him. He admitted that he didn’t know anything about servers and promised to assign his “best person” to install the program for us.

There were two kinds of IT staff in this department – knowledgeable but unhelpful or helpful but clueless. The “best person” was Lina Zelinka, and she was firmly belonged to the former. She exemplified IT’s motto: “Let’s get to the heart of the matter – technology.” Translation: give us your technology and STFU. I gave Lina detailed instructions and specifications along with the installation CD. She called me a week later to say that (1) she installed it on a restricted access server belonging to Darcie Wallace, a manager who zealously guarded it and (2) that it didn’t work after she spent days trying “everything.” Clearly, she didn’t read a damn thing I wrote.

I took a couple deep breaths. Remember, I’m a professional… I’m a professional… Calmly, I went down to IT. With Tech Support on the phone, I successfully reinstalled DocuWiz in 45 minutes. Calming Darcie down was a major chore, but after a month or two, I managed to get her to accept that DocuWiz was using limited resources on her server and that it would not interfere with her operations. Oh, I almost forgot about the flying squirrels. Lina rarely responded to emails or phone messages in a timely fashion, so to get her to transfer some old data over to DocuWiz, I physically sat in her cubicle and watched her do it. To pass the time, she told me stories about her flying squirrels for an hour. Hey, whatever it takes to get the job done.

Installation was finally complete after six months. Now the real work could begin…only I was too tired to care. It is then, when you are most vulnerable, that the vultures swoop in.

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