Friday Mayhem

How is it that one simple little task that a person does every single day cause so much trouble? Well, let me tell you one thing… If you were a fly on the wall that day, you definitely would be able to answer that question.

My day -- actually, my morning -- started out pretty well. I drove to work with ease… It was payday *cha-ching*… In addition, I was planning to go with the flow of things. THEN I WALKED INTO WORK! I went through my usual morning routine -- turned on my computer, got my desk ready for work, put my personal things away, and got my breakfast and morning coffee. Once I got settled, I logged onto Outlook to read my e-mail, which I always do to see if there were any project updates that I needed to do right away. My attitude was, “Why bother considering no one would be sending me anything to work with?” I set aside that thought, and of course, I definitely found something in the email!

Email:
SUBJECT: Project # (whatever it was - you wouldn’t understand it)
BODY: Project such and such had its ticket closed out, and not in Oracle (our projects and contracts database). Please fix it!

So, I was thinking that this should be easy enough considering that it does not take that long to create a new project and contract into a database. Geez, I was definitely wrong about that! Everything that you could possibly think that could go wrong definitely did… Prior to setting up a project, I normally go through all the information, and highlight “key” items that needs inputting into Oracle. Well, going through my “highlighting” process, I found that there was a little mix up with the prime and end clients. Considering that this project was an “Intercompany” contract (a project funded by our own company), I had to make sure that everything was done carefully. The contract administrator had placed our company’s name in the end client. The norm is when dealing with an Intercompany contract, we are always the prime client. [Let me explain prime and end clients -- the prime client is the company that holds the contract, and funds the services provided; the end client is the company who receives the services provided for the particular project.] The CA and I agreed with the definition of the prime and end clients, but which category the client should be in became a disagreement. So, I discussed it with one of our CAs in our department. She clarified what I had stated above, but told me to discuss it with the head of our billing department. I emailed her, with a copy of the contract attached, and she clarified my thought. Anyway, I was right… He was wrong… He made the correction… Easy enough, right? WRONG!!!!

Another problem (same project) comes along. My thought process was to set up the project, and close out the ticket once he made the corrections. Here is where my mistake came along… As I was setting up the project, I did not realize that I had setup everything with the old information. So, everything that I had tried to make clear for an hour and half all went to waste! Because of this blunder, I had to close out the project, and recreate a new one since Oracle is not friendly to those who make little mistakes like that.

Anyway, as I was starting over (for the second time), I came to realize that the customer database contained 225 different addresses for our company. To find out the address, I went back to the contract to figure out which client numbers to choose. I could not find the address at all! So, I called the CA to see if he could help me out… He was of no help at all! I just picked the closest thing I could get, and compared the numbers to the listing that we have for reference.

Overall,… this project took me FOUR HOURS to work on! Oh, so frustrating…

To compensate for such a hectic morning, though, the day went on slow. We did not really get that many projects to update or create. The Contracts Assistant that I work with leaves at 3:00 every Friday afternoon. So, she told me to go home early since there was not anything left to do. Me like it!

Rob and I went out for dinner, and played pool at 4th Dimensions (kind of like a belated “We met a year ago” kind of anniversary outing / “I had a bad day, and need a drink” kind of fun.) It was an end to a very interesting and overwhelming day (and week).