Do the work, send an email... is that so hard?

Alrighty... yet another rant today, i think... but I have to vent a bit about how my day ended yesterday.

Ok... so some of you know I work in online marketing... and part of that is the Client Experience (ensuring that people who hit our sites have a good experience free of annoyance).

So, I got an assignement... seemed pretty straightforward. Person A will tell you when target Q is live. When you get that notice, have our coding wizards change this page to activate these links (currently hidden), then ask webmaster to launch them.

Got the notice from Person A... target Q will be live at 1:00 p.m. Do what you need anytime after then and before the end of the day. Got our coding guys to do their magic. Sent the request at 1:30 to launch. Now, sometimes it takes our webmaster folks a while to launch things. I can understand that... they're busy folks. The longest I've ever had to wait was about an hour and a quarter.

3:00 meeting... didn't have a notification before I left... figured it'd be there when I got back. Nope. 4:00 got back... still no notification. Frantic email marked urgent in as many ways as I could think of requesting and update because this is something that absolutely HAD to launch on Wednesday. Email back saying it's done. Go to check the page... the links which worked in development don't work in the real world. Problem. About to pick up the phone to call our coding guys for ideas when my phone rings. Webmaster of the moment calling... "yeah... it was launched at 1:36, I guess I forgot to send the email". WTF!?!?!?!?!? So there's been broken links on a fairly high-traffic page directing to something that's likely to be high demand for 3 hours?!?!?!?!!!!!! Not cool! So I point out to him that had I known at 1:36, I could have been testing by 1:38... found the broken links, been on the phone to my coding guys by 1:40 to fix the damn thing... rather than trying to contact them at the end of the day (after 4:00) and throwing my plans for my real life (outside this place) into disarray because I'd already missed my train (a fact I didn't mention)... and then I asked how long someone would be there to help fix this. "umm... I can probably help you 'til about 5:00". Damn skippy you can help me 'til 5:00... it's your fault this mad scramble is happening, buddy.

Anyway... turned out that the problem had a very simple fix, and had I known about it at 1:36, could have had it resolved by 2:00 easily. So I call buddy... ok, bud, I need you to launch these other two files (one English, one French 'cuz we're in Canada and we do things in both languages)... he tells me they're done... English works fine, French still doesn't work. "oh, really? Let me try uploading that again". Right. "Done". Nope, still doesn't work. "oh, we might have to wait a couple of seconds because the next resynch is at 4:30, which is in 3 minutes". Hey, guy? You know what? 3 minutes isn't a couple of seconds. It's 180 seconds. (at this point he was just pissing me off). 4:31... tested again... finally! Quick note to the people involved to let them know it's up... quick shut-down and grab my stuff... out the door at 4:45 (only an hour later than usual *grumble*), hit play on the 'pod... and sailed on to Union Station to the strains of Rammstein (such perfect music when one's in a foul mood ;) nothing like German Industrial music to make your troubles seem smaller *laugh*)

And so ended my work day yesterday. Fun!

On other topics... made it to the mailbox before the 5 p.m. pick-up, so my secret pal (I shower her with cards and gifts... she has no idea who they're coming from) should be getting her next surprise today or tomorrow... got "found" by two old high-school friends on facebook... and was saddened to read of the passing of William Hutt yesterday (yes... he was 87... yes he'd had a good long run at life... yes, he had lukemia... but the man was an outstanding actor with a tremendous command of the stage, and it's sad to know that one more actor of that calibre, a rare breed these days, has passed from the theatre world). And apparently Liz Claibourne died, too... although I must admit that means very little to me *shrug* I'm about as far from a fashionista as it's possible to get *laugh*

And so begins another day... Have a great one!