Life and Living Revelation of Friday the Thirteenth

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Revelation of Friday the Thirteenth
Written by Shirley T   
Friday, 13 June 2008 17:37



Friday 13thI reached my work place at 6:59 am. As I walked passed the corridor to my cube, I imagined of the coming weekend which started after 4 pm today. That brought a smile to my face. As I started working on the stuff to launch a new measurement system for people performance, I realized there was a grey area that demands further investigation before pursuing further. Then, my desk phone rang! My superior who is based in another country called and told me that some of vital data in database table was accidentally erased. So, it meant I had to rebuild the data again and he sounded urgent. I was terribly upset as I had to dig up all the emails to trace back bits and pieces of the content in the table.

As the same time, I also realized that I was not able to complete the new item scheduled for today since I had to hurry for the unforeseen incident (urgent versus important). I knew I kept a back-up copy somewhere but I couldn't find in every folder I searched. I couldn't even recall the name of the file. My mind was blanked. It was really a waste of time! As I was so stressed of today's luck, the date and day on calendar struck me. It was 13 June 2008 Friday (Friday the Thirteenth). I decided to stop and break for lunch.

After lunch, my brain was back in operation (as I can be rather miserable in food depriving state), suddenly I thought of a location to search. Thank God I found a back-up copy and quickly fix it. At times, being paranoid to save a back-up copy does expedite thing when it screw-up. Of course, I am not hoping for this happen frequently.

As I was just about to relieve, another phone call rang. An associate from a project team of same based office called to ask about a third party request, questioning me about an email dated 2 weeks ago that I had replied a day after and shared the constraint we faced with her in the email loop. She then kept repeating that I was not answering the third party request. According to her, he (third party) would like to have item A, B and C separately while I was only answering as one item as whole. Oh dear, after about 5 minutes of heated conversation, I started to understand what she meant. To my surprise, she didn't read the complete sentence and concluded he wished to have 3 items separately instead of 3 in 1. Hence, I had to be a polite English teacher to point up that the request only made sense when she finished comprehending the whole sentence which was exactly what I had answered in my replied email. Arrgghh! Yet the conversation was not ended there, she insisted our team to deliver despite the constraint stated. She refused to believe the constraint existed so I asked her to prove with data. No answer. Thus, I suggested we consulted another colleague of mine (since she refused to believe me, in my opinion), whom was the subject matter expert to join the call. Again, she declined. Instead she said it was from my boss that I am the contact person for this project and I had to answer. I then repeated again the answer I gave in email, in earlier conversation, in middle conversation of the same constraint again and again. I was still being nice and polite to explain yet my voice was getting loud and louder over the phone. My inner self was getting pissed-off. After several repetitions, she agreed to seek help to overcome the constraint.

After hung up the phone, I was totally drained out of energy. I felt a combination of irate and hilarious, questioning myself whether I was really dealing with a matured professional folk? What other skill I have to equip myself with? An ability to read human's mind? Or, just blame Friday the Thirteenth!

Key take away: back-up important data, importance of comprehension, negotiation and psychological skills.

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