Work.

It seems that all I do now is work. I come out here to type my little entries and they are about work.

Work this.

Work that.

Stress this.

Stress that.

I haven’t been so stressed at the agency in a long time.

We’re launching this new set of tools and process and I don’t want it to fail. No one wants it to fail, but there are growing pains as with all new systems.

People are unwilling to accept change, some people are unclear of how the tools work, and some people are just fucking stupid.

People.

I think that’s the source of the majority of my stress.

Fucking people.

* * *

Thursday was probably one of the roughest days in a long while.

I’m behind on my work and it more work keeps coming.

Then all I hear are complaints and complaints and frustration.

One person called out the too as shit because they can’t access files or use the tool while on our client’s shitty wifi. Everyone knows that our client’s guest wifi is shitty.

EVERYONE knows this. We provide these users mifis specifically for this reason, but he felt that was unreasonable and therefore dismisses the tool right out.

Strike 1.

Then my BFF had some questions about the new tool sets and was confused about the whole setup and the logistics of it. This is a legit concern and I agree that it can get confusing.

I sat down with her, drew a diagram and tried to help her understand the tool and how things are setup.

I can see that she’s confused and frustrated and that doesn’t help my anxiety and frustration either.

A part of me feels that I didn’t do a good job in training in dispelling in the information that they needed to get these users up to speed. A part of me was frustrated with Microsoft with how they setup their tools and how lacking some of their stuff is and another part of me was just tired of everything.

Strike 2.

I honestly wasn’t that mad or offended or even frustrated by this. I really don’t blame them. Again, her concern was legit and should be a concern to my team and me. It just shows that people need more training. Better training. Clear training.

For the rest of the day I was stressed, frustrated and definitely there were times when I just wanted to run, hide, and cry. My emotions and the pressure from the stress was too much, but eventually I relaxed and calmed down.

The thing that finally broke me happened while I was disconnected from everything.

There was a happy hour that afternoon and I decided to go because I needed a drink because of everything. Of course, my phone dies at happy hour, so I missed everything.

Getting in the car after everything there were a barrage of emails and conversations going back and forth about a disconcerting email that went out to many higher up and dozens and dozens of people throwing our tool under the bus.

There weren’t many specific details to the email but that this user was having problems sharing a PowerPoint presentation and called out the tool as the culprit.

The link that he sent worked fine, without any problems.

He never reached out to me or my team for any help and went ahead and just shat on the tool.

I was pissed. Fucking livid.

Strike 3.

That almost broke me. It was a culmination of everything.

EVERYTHING.

After dinner, my boss sent me a few emails giving us more insight into the issue.

Going over the emails, it was all user error. Fucking user error.

This fucking guy fucked up and instead of taking responsibility for it, he blamed the tool.

He sent out three emails in total. There are two hyperlinks to SharePoint files in both.

The excel file worked fine. The PowerPoint link was a link to an empty PowerPoint presentation.

The second email, he claimed to have sent the proper link, but the fucker sent a bad link in the hyperlink. He forgot to delete everything before he pasted the shareable link in the hyperlink. So, whenever users click on the link, it fails because it doesn’t know what that link is.

The third email was the one that I received initially, with just the link pasted in the email and it works.

ALL FUCKING USER ERROR.

It broke me.

During dinner, I was stress eating. I normally don’t go out to eat during the week, but I came home late, didn’t want to cook, and I was just looking to drown my sorrows and frustration in food.

Stress eating has been my drug of choice as of late.

I posted an IG post that was so true. That day was the first time in my almost decade tenure at the agency where I almost lost my shit around people. It was the first time that I wanted to fucking give up, break down, and cry.

This shit is breaking me.

After everything, and figuring out it was user error, I was over it. It wasn’t the tool, but the users.

* * *

I was in better spirits the next day.

Emails were coming in and the things that I had to do kept piling up but early in the morning, we had a conversation with the fucker and his boss.

My boss and I went down to discuss the situation.

There was a lot of push back and just confusion about everything.

Yes. Microsoft Teams can be confusing on how it was built with the dual SharePoint thing. The Teams SharePoint is a restricted SharePoint site, hence the difficulties in sharing out documents from time to time.

But, the situation from the night before wasn’t the tools fault. It was user error.

While showing them the tool, explaining to them about the Teams SharePoint and everything, I tried so hard to keep my cool. Apparently, I was shaking the whole time.

Either way, the thing that came out of it was that I’ll ramp up a proper SharePoint site and connect it to their Team. We have a training next week to go through everything.

Everyone was to blame in this situation. The tone of the email that was sent out. The fucker – not contacting IT when he had problems.

IT, us, me not doing proper training or not clarifying any issues.

We are all at fault.

Later in the afternoon, I had another discussion with my BFF with the tool and everything and it was a better conversation. I wasn’t so stressed and we all came to conclusion that we, the agency as a whole, shouldn’t be forced into one single process.

We all have to understand that different teams and groups work differently and shouldn’t need to adopt a workflow and process that really doesn’t apply to them.

IT can provide these teams tools and some standards and it’s a matter of figuring out how to implement these tools into their workflow.

That’s ultimately the big hurdle with my BFF’s team.

* * *

Change is here and many are against it.

That’s the gist of it.

It’ll be an ongoing battle and I honestly don’t want this to fail. I’ve poured so much of myself into this. It’s killing me.

I told my boss I’ll most likely have a mental breakdown in six months. I definitely believe that is true if things don’t go smoother.

There are many successes but it seems like there are so many other battles left.

Will it end?

If so, when?

* * *