Crash

Someday, a very important computer server is going to crash.  It is inevitable.  There is no way around it.  And it will be totally devastating. 

…It might be a world bank, or all of the America-hosted internet, or the system that keeps track of all the air traffic routes and locations, or the tracker that keeps everyone’s SS# and personal info stats. It could be anything. Because odds are odds, and math is math, and nothing is constant.

Nothing.

…Which is kind of terrifying if you let yourself really think on it.

…So I try not to.

…But then a super-small-scale crash (in comparison) like today’s at work, will happen…and you can’t help but be reminded that someday we are all truly going to be good and fucked. 

By computers.

Our entire system crashed today. Crashed hard.

Corporate send out red flags via every backdoor communication source they had, freaking everyone out and leaving us that way for the better part of the day.

…This is bad timing to be freaking people out, what with multiple National road shows and stats and contracts flying thought the cloud network in batch numbers almost not to be believed. My own valuations were just above $52k and 35 contracts strong from the last 24 hours alone, before they lost the final connection with our server, and all died in front of our eyes.

Death.

…With so many numbers.

…And no way to know if that would be just today’s batches, or the weeks, or our entire Open Order Reports.

“Sit tight. We don’t know how bad it is yet,” was all we got for 4 and a half hours.

…And then a few updates managing to confirm our individual reports were safe, “for the most part.” And then an update on what, “for the most part” actually meant.

…So that by 5 hours in, we were told the worst of it, being that there was no salvage of anything going back to the latest full Corporate backup.

…Which by freak coincidence (being a Monday) was yesterday.

…So everything I’d done, or the Sales Reps, or the Customer Service Department, Accounting, Order Entry…since 5pm EST yesterday…was toast.

…Which means worse than “none of the things we did today ever existed.”

…Because server crash or not, we have contract deadlines to make.

…And from the Corporate level, we have 32 branches.

…All of whose orders need to be re-entered, reprinted, reprocessed.

From the beginning.

…Meanwhile today’s orders will be backlogged while they play “catch up.” Which screws with those contract dates as well. In a large-scale trickle effect that already slammed, will mean manic overtime hours to achieve.

…Which no one seems willing to pay for.

…Because these bastards are fucking cheap.

Case in point: we are still using an old server that can’t run up to speed, thus crashes, thus causes all of this shit-panic to begin with.

As for me: I am going to be packing up at 4 pm, as I do every day. Because that is what I signed up for. There is very little I can do until the contracts are reinserted into our network, and resent to me, to begin with. That will have to wait until I come in and start this circus all over again tomorrow, at 8am.

…And I’m taking a lunch like a normal person too. Today’s black coffee and gummy bear brunch, while hand-drawing up contracts from scratch, forgetting even to take a pee when I needed it, will not be the norm for the week.

I just refuse.

I said it.

~D