Just When You Think It Can't Get Any Worse...

Wow, I now believe I can say with extreme confidence that everything related to my work is a "total cock up."

With desperation, I was so hoping that June would be the time when I could dig out of the horrific May, but alas, I was completely wrong.

Things that weren't working in May are now worse. Things that were working in May don't seem to be working now. In fact, I'm not sure anything is going right at all.

In order to keep things a little vague, I'll refer to my programs as big customer and little customer (though with a big ego). Well, big customer has gotten more and more frustrated with our services over recent weeks, mainly because we simply can't get everything done. We've already had two "crisis meetings," and this past Friday, the European manager brought his Japanese managers in to tour our facility, and it was a total shambles.

The technicians got nervous and didn't show well. The customer didn't like our processes, our line layout. In fact, they basically said we were shite. Sure, my boss was there, as was my business unit president; quite the highlight of my career, yeah?

By the way, we've had some logistical nightmares in Spain; UPS can't seem to collect any packages on the first try. I've got some units that have needed to be picked up for almost 20 days. My customer's biggest retailer, El Corte Ingles, has decided to stop selling the products, and they account for about half of Spanish sales.

As if this weren't enough, my little customer has recently become such a challenge that I've been forced to spend 6 to 8 hours a day on that piece of business. That's on top of the 10 to 12 hours I need to put in on the big customer. As you might have guessed, I've quickly run out of Bryan.

I spent Friday entertaining my big customer, though I probably should use a better word than "entertain." A film crew was in house to figure out how they wanted to shoot a promotional video. They were accompanied by my direct counterpart (the cool techno girl) as well as a new member to their customer service team. I tried to spend as much time as possible with them, but then techno girl's manager arrived with the Japanese.

When we began the tour of the facility, I was hoping that things would go pretty smoothly. Nope. We spent 2 hours plus on the repair line and EVERYTHING went wrong. At one point, I muttered something about shooting myself in the head with a very big pistol, to which the angry customer said, "no way am I letting you get off easy."

The customer finally got sick of looking at everything, and sent the Japanese on to their hotel in Frankfurt. Meanwhile, he stayed behind and read me, my boss, and my boss' boss the riot act. During that joyous occasion, my stateside colleague phoned me 10 times, as I was unable to attend a daily conference call with him, the stateside managers and the European manager of the little customer. We'd had a big push to get a lot of things done by close of business Friday, and I'd sent a frantic email to the internal team stating what needed to be done, only to find out that sod all happened. So, my colleague got the crap beaten out of him for my team's failure to execute.

Of course, I couldn't get out of my own meeting to join the conference call; I was in the middle of my own pounding.

Finally, the customer had to catch his cab back to the airport, leaving us to sit in a stupor. I'm not sure what you're supposed to say in these kinds of things, but I think I said, "Hey Kris, thanks for coming, yeah?" to the customer as he got into the cab.

Next week, the CEO of my company, along with my BU president, my boss, and my UK colleagues will spend a day in Brussels getting the bejeezus kicked out of us. This is our third chance to put things right, and while I won't say that I've been completely clean, I will say that this program involves managing a call center, managing logistics around Europe, and two repair facilities. As a company, we've been unable to get our arms completely around this. We don't have enough support and it's quite possible that by the end of the week, I'll be sacked.

My little customer continues to want a piece of the action, too. Their management is coming to Weiterstadt next week, and apparently they're going to be particularly pissed with me, as one of the days there going to be here I'll be out of town on business.

Friday, to sum up, was absolutely awful. I spoke with my UK colleague for about an hour on the train home, then spoke with my US colleague for another hour, having to apologize profusely for leaving him to get smacked about while I missed the teleconference.

It's a bit warm here at moment, and as I finished my phone conversations, my phone started acting up. I tried to power down then power up again, but there was a bit of moisture in the phone, probably from my sweat.

Long story short, I put in the wrong PIN number three times in a row, so the phone now wants the PUK number before I can reset. I've been trying my PUK number since Friday, and have managed now to get my SIM card totally rejected.

To some extent, that is probably a good thing, having my phone out of order. But, I know that I had about 20 voice mails on Friday, and I'm sure a few more have come in over the weekend, and I'm screwed until Monday when hopefully my colleague Claudia can get me sorted out.

I spent Friday night in the pub, beer in hand, trying to make sense of it all. I was so exhausted that I just kept drinking until 3am (I didn't arrive there until 9.30 or so; it's not as if I was there for 10 hours) and felt only a slight ache on Saturday. Saturday I never left the house, choosing instead to read and think. Fortunately, I did pop out for some groceries just before the store closed.

I've done a bit of work today, but feel OK about not working yesterday. We had a local holiday here on Thursday; I worked 12 straight hours.

Listening to a lot of Clash right at the moment, laughing at the irony of "Safe European Home", "Career Opportunities", and laughing also at the reality of "Straight to Hell."

Unbelievable. As much as I wouldn't mind being back in Spain, I certainly don't want to have to go because I screwed this up in Germany. I was actually kidding when I mentioned that before.

A friend is celebrating his birthday this evening, so I will go up and have a drink or two with the group. I just wish I had another way to take away the anxiety; Monday will be here too soon.

So, there you have it. This week's pathetic update. Here's hoping that something improves very very quickly.

keep the faith
bryan