One Mistake, 25 Hours, and 25 Employees Couldn’t Work!
It was a normal day at Northside Realty in Atlanta, GA. I was a computer operator. Half my day was data entry of insurance claims for our 2000 realtors. The other part was backing up the work of the 25 employees of the Accounts Payable Department. Our Data Processing department consisted of myself and my supervisor, David Van Zandt. We did everything from printing and distributing quarterly reports that were thousands of pages long and paychecks to troubleshooting five floors of terminals. We also transitioned from one computer system to another and tried to decipher the spaghetti COBOL code of a brillant programmer, who, very unfortunately, died of a heart attack. This was before the days of modular programming, and it is a very difficult task to figure out how to modify such programs. We would tackle this task on slow days.
On this day, my boss was in San Francisco for a conference.
My workstation at @northsiderealty in Atlanta, GA
One of my tasks was to run a UNIX shell program that was, I believe, somewhere around 256 characters long. It had to be typed in exactly as written. Maybe it was too long for a macro, so we couldn’t automate this.
My routine was to type it in and I could type 5 characters ahead in the buffer but no more than that. As I typed, I’d pause and check to make sure it was correct. I was very tired that night. Somewhere in the process, I mistyped and didn’t catch the mistake until the unholy thing was executing! In fact, I tried to interrupt it, but it was too late.
I tried to call my boss, then waited for a callback. California is 4 hours ahead of Georgia, so it was already pretty late. My computer operator duties began at 5 o’clock in the afternoon and went until around 9:30 or 10, so it was now around 6 or so.
While I waited, I went over the manuals for our software and looked up anything in the index to help me understand how bad this was. That was maybe an hour before I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere.
So, I tried my boss again, then called tech support.
They escalated me to one of the programmers, if not the programmer who wrote the shell routine. We discussed options. “You could restore from backup and start over,” he suggested.
I tried to call Dave again. It was getting pretty late and I was not allowed to work over 40 hours in a week, so I made a fateful decision.
I restored from backup. During this, I kept trying to call Dave, but thought surely this would fix my problem.
Finally, I had the backup finished and called again. This time I did get Dave. I explained.
“Tell me you didn’t restore from backup.”
I looked into the computer room where the 14-inch reel-to-reel tapes were still. The backup was finished. “Yes, I did.”
There was a pause, and an audible exhale. Oh, boy. I’m in for it now! But, Dave took a few seconds to collect his thoughts. I’m not sure I would have been as patient with my employee as he was. He didn’t get angry or say anything like I expected to hear, like, say, How could you be so stupid? I was sure saying it to myself.
Nope, he just said, “Let me think about this a minute. Maybe there are some things we can try to do together.”
And, that’s what we did. Dave suggested this and that, and I did it. For hours, he would suggest something and I would go do it, and come back to our black wall phone and report the result. At this point, I wasn’t as worried about going over 40 hours. I did take time to call my husband to tell him I would be late getting home, from another line. And, to cry for a minute.
Well, this process went on and one. Morning came, though our windowless space consisted of a temperature-controlled room that held the blue refrigerator-sized CS 200, our old minicomputer system, the backup system that took the 14-inch reel-to-reel tapes and storage cabinets with our old backups and fresh tapes. Then there was the beige cabinet about the size of a chest deep freeze. Today you probably have that much processing power in your cellphone.
All photos copyright Dannis Cole.
I called my pharmacist husband to let him know I was still at work and he’d have to get our 5 year old daughter ready for school.
At 8 am there was a knock, and I opened the door to find an incredulous worker or three. “Oh, my goodness! You’re still here, Dannis? None of our computers will come up.”
I had to explain things, which was extremely uncomfortable. Nobody got mad about it. But, my boss’ boss and his boss were very upset. They came next.
They had me explain in detail what I did, what I was doing to solve this problem, and talked to Dave on the phone. Of course, they were accounting folks and managers, not data processing people. What we did all day probably seemed like magic in a black box to them, just like their number-crunching and spreadsheets seemed like magic to me. The level of explanation they wanted was way beyond my league, but Dave was able to explain it very well. He has a Master’s in Computer Science, and is a very intelligent man, also very good with people.
Unfortunately, nothing we did worked. We were still trying things until at 10:30 am, Dave called it. I told his bosses, and one of them told me I needed to stay until I found a solution. Several ladies from AP went to him and convinced him to let me go home.
I was in tears. All 25 of those AP employees were going to have to repeat all their work from yesterday. I felt awful that my one-letter mistype caused this whole mess. But all of those employees gathered around me and told me they weren’t mad. Even though Dave’s bosses were very unhappy, they didn’t ever get rude.
I had been at work 25 hours straight. The exhaustion, the stress, lack of sleep, and my painful body got to me. Keep in mind, I was not a healthy person and had several un-diagnosed medical conditions. My disabilities also contributed to this in a big way. I wasn’t exactly the safest driver on the road, but my husband was now at work and couldn’t come get me. My commute took an hour, so I was extra careful.
I didn’t even get fired. Things got back to normal, though I quit typing ahead when doing the AP distro, even though it took longer.
Later, when I got a job at Georgia Tech Library in Systems, I told my boss about this. He laughed and said, “Oh, I did something similar at a job I had. I’ve heard a lot of stories from other people I’ve worked with, so I think everybody’s made a mistake that caused problems for other people.” That made me feel a little better about it, and other more minor mistakes as well. Everyone makes them, but if people aren’t admitting them, it’s easy to think you’re somehow a bad worker.
So, I’m writing this post for all of you out there who might’ve made a major mistake that affected other workers in your department. We’re human. We will make mistakes, sometimes big ones. What matters is your willingness to try to fix it, and how you treat your fellow workers when mistakes happen. My supers remembered to treat their human capital with respect, despite the extra stress, work and cost of my mistake.
We’ve probably all had a boss who lost their temper or wanted to place blame and shame. But, a good supervisor will realize that humans make mistakes and concentrate on fixing the problem, not getting revenge on the person who dared to make it.
Our department pulled together to cope with this mistake. Nobody yelled or got rude. People did express their frustrations, but in a humane manner. Note that there was considerable unhappiness. Nobody wants to repeat work they already did. Nobody wants extra work in a busy department.
But, Northside Realty had a very healthy work culture. The owner of those 22 companies was Johnny Isaakson, a congressman in Georgia for many years.
I didn’t see him often, but when I did, I saw why our work culture was so healthy. One day I came in and saw him greeting one of the custodians. By name. He also greeted me and asked for my name, since this was probably the first time he saw me.
Once, I had to go up to his office to trace down and document the wires from his terminal to where they entered the floor, then to the LAN. This involved crawling around under his desk on my hands and knees, which made me more than a bit nervous. I tend to be a bit timid around men. To my relief, Johnny Isaakson went about his work and phone calls. He wasn’t looking at me. He was friendly, but businesslike, which was exactly what I wanted. After I finished, he asked me some questions about my work. I left feeling like a valued employee. On his desk were pictures of his wife and family. I felt happy to work for this man, a person who treated all his employees well, from computer operator to custodian.
He opened his home to all of us for an annual Christmas party, and treated us to a picnic at Stone Mountain during the summer. Our families were welcome, the food was wonderful, and he provided these activities at his expense. These things really contributed to my happiness at work.
I still remember this job as one of my favorites. I enjoyed tackling problems, most of which we were able to fix, but I really enjoyed working with all these pleasant people. Every Secretary’s Day, like all our employees, I got a rose. Like the realtors, I was allowed to get the supply room to make me a name plate for my desk, which I still have.
A fun tradition we had was, everyone contributed a dollar every month for a communal birthday ice cream cake. The folks who had birthdays that month decided on what kind of cake they wanted, and everyone got a slice on the day nearest to all the birthdays.
Little things like that helped me feel like I belonged. A lot of workplaces could take some suggestions from my experience.
