11:55 p.m. - 2002-09-06
What`s Up Doc
I am a morning person while my co-worker shines later in the afternoon. In some ways that is good because we know that at least one person on site will be thinking clearly at all times. In other ways it requires some thought because we come and go on different schedules to accommodate our biorhythms. It also means that team work needs to be carefully planned. I don't ask any more of her when she comes in first thing - about an hour later than me - than I have to and she has learned to reciprocate at the end of my work day when I'm on automatic pilot. At those times I try to schedule tasks that don't require any creative or analytical thought nor do I do well with questions that require those skills.
This morning was one of those times when we had to compromise. When I left work the evening before, she had been editing one of our spreadsheets. She was creating a second copy on sheet two that sorted our data by a different set of variables so we could search by different parameters. I saw her save it and I saw the changes she had made to the labeling because I was working nearby on another task.
When I arrived at work this morning I opened up that spreadsheet because I wanted to use her adaptation to do some coding. I went to the drive and folder she had been in the night before, but the spreadsheet that opened was the original single sheet version. I checked the other two folders where we store data but neither of those had it either. I assumed she had renamed the revised spreadsheet and stored it in another folder so I just worked on sheet 1 in the first version I opened entering new data - it could be cut and pasted to the new version later.
When she arrived at work we realized that all her work from the afternoon before had been lost. Now we both have no doubt we make mistakes, but this has been going on for three months. Sometimes data is lost, sometimes it is corrupted, and sometimes it appears to have been altered. After we had spent some time trying to determine what exactly had happened, we decided that we would let our supervisor know with a copy of the e-mail sent to our liaison in the company we contract to. My co-worker recreated her work while I completed my solo tasks and then we created another database together to facilitate the next phase of our work.
At about eleven, our liaison came by and was quite insistent that one of us had probably just deleted it in error. With computers anything is possible but only the editing my co-worker had done on the spreadsheet was lost, yet I had seen her do the backup necessary. I don't believe that by opening that copy this morning that the work was deleted, otherwise it would be an issue every morning or any other time we power our station down. We have other copies of the spreadsheet stored, but either part of the stem of the name is different or the material is in other folders so there isn't cross contamination. We don't synchronize the copies nor have we set up automatic updates for that reason.
I understand that our liaison would like to believe that none of her staff would deliberately damage others' work but something is definitely wrong. Maybe it is a hacker, but a hacker would likely be more random in their vandalism. We did want to get to the bottom of the problem because it costs us so much time.
I was so nauseated by lunch that I didn't bother taking a break; besides I wanted to recover some of our productive time because we have deadlines to meet. My co-worker went off to carry out an errand but didn't get back until 2 pm. I expect she went to see our supervisor because she had been present both at the beginning and the end of the problem. He is very thorough and likes to go through each incident in detail until he is certain it is clear in his mind. That is better addressed when it is still fresh in our minds.
It is a nice change to know he is listening to us now. I'm glad whatever was making him so angry has been dealt with. I wasn't sure how much longer I could cope with his and the "queen of mean"'s anger on top of the workplace problems and the volume of work that kept being piled on. I still am very disappointed with his behavior because I don't think he was being fair or honest with me during that time. This work requires a very high level of trust between the members of the team and for me that has been compromised. How can I be sure this cycle won't repeat itself. I know my skills are highly valued because my expertise is needed on this project but I'm not willing to work under conditions like those of the past three months again. My supervisor has always said that respect for others you work with is the most important element of an undertaking but I need to be sure of that.
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