We're Serious About Success

Sometimes I wish I had attended DeVry. Okay, I'm not entirely serious but some days I do wish that I worked at a company that employed at least a few DeVry graduates because I've heard that they're supposed to be pretty serious about success and we could use at least one person like that in our organization.

I had a meltdown of almost epic proportions today which I can only assume is mainly due to the serious lack of Devry alumni employed at my workplace. So here's the deal: About six months ago a new web based "tool" was implemented globally within our company. The purpose of this "tool" was to centralize a number of databases and functions that each region or country utilized and have one common system that everyone used. In theory this was a great idea since most companies had done this type of thing years ago. Unfortunately, like many other great "theoretical" ideas, it wasn't quite as great an idea when put into actual practice. When I got my first glance at this new program, I was reminded of the program I had created as the final project for the computer programming class I took during my second hear of high school. To be clear, I sucked big time at programming but this program was my Sistine Chapel. I mean this thing could like add up numbers and change colours and stuff. Trust me it was pretty impressive stuff which should give you an idea of how impressed I was with by this new program.

When they first unveiled this beast to our department, I commented to one of my coworkers that "I had no idea they had contracted this project out to a group of DeVry students for a school project." This was (not surprisingly) an ill advised comment as it turned out that his son had attended Devry back in its heyday. I obviously felt pretty bad about the situation for a couple of reasons. First, I just felt really bad that his son had actually attended DeVry and on top of that I felt bad for myself that I had somehow managed to find the father of the only person to actually attend Devry and had then proceeded to make the disparaging comment about the institute of higher learning. I found out that his son hadn't actually graduated from DeVry so I tried to explain that I actually had more respect for DeVry dropouts as opposed to graduates since at least the dropouts came to their senses at some point. Surprisingly this did little to appease my compadre.

Oh and in case you're thinking to yourself "I had no idea DeVry had a heyday?" Well you my friend are mistaken because it most definitely did. In case you missed out, it occured during the mid to late eighties when DeVry sensed that there was an untapped market of uneducated couch potatoes who were longing to be seriously successful. Sensing this need, they flooded television airwaves during shows like "Magnum P.I." with overproduced commericals that took aim at capturing the hearts and...um...wallets I guess of this demographic. In case you don't remember their commercials I've included one below.



So back to the reason for my breakdown: Last week in our daily departmental meeting, "Pong 2008" (as I like to refer to it) locked up and I couldn't get anything to work so I went to hit the refresh button which usually does the trick but instead of hitting the refresh button I ended up hitting what turned out to actually be the "DELETE THE ENTIRE DATABASE" button that was not labelled as such. Initially I didn't panic because I thought "What yahoo would design a program that would allow some peon like me to singlehandedly delete the entire department's database?" Then I remembered that the company had cancelled that DeVry recruiting drive back in the fall so it was anybody's guess which Coconut College alumnus had been charged with button labelling on this project.

After I realized that this wasn't a problem I could fix, I got on the blower with our onsite contact for these types of issues who put me in touch with our national contact who then informed me that the issue had to be addressed by someone at our global headquarters in Belgium since they managed the application. Ah, finally it all made sense. It was the Belgians who were to blame! Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Belgians as long as they're simply responsible for making delicious beer and chocolate. However, putting them in charge of the company's supercomputers just didn't seem like the best way to play to their strengths. The kicker was that the guy who had told me to get in touch with Belgium also suggested that I should probably wait until the next day to call Belgium since they had probably left for the day. I looked at my watch which read 7:15AM and thought to myself "isn't it like 3:15PM in Belgium?" I realize that North Americans aren't exactly known for their aggressive pursuit of work-life balance but is it too much to ask for our Belgian friends to put in a full six hour work day? Answer: Yes . Then I realized that because of this guy's incompetence I'd have to come in at 6AM and put in a 12 hour work day just to get in touch with him during his five hour work day. Needless to say I wasn't impressed.

I did eventually manage to get in touch with my Belgian contact at some point between him throwing back cold ones and eating hot fudge sundaes. The problem was that even after getting in touch with him it ended up taking three days to get the thing restored again. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal but we basically rely on this thing for a number of our daily activities so it was quite inconvenient for everyone in the department. No one was more put out by the whole thing than me since I had to explain that I was the one who had singlehandedly deleted everything which wasn't so fun after about the tenth time. I finally lost it when I explained what had happened to one of my co-workers and he asked "Well how are we going to have our meetings without it?" To which I responded "I don't know Jim? Maybe we'll have to do like the pioneers did and use our brains for a change instead of relying on these supercomputers that the Belgians control." Obviously, grace under fire is not one of my giftings.

Anyway, I guess "all's well that ends well" right? Yeah that doesn't really apply here but I'm really working on not letting things like this get to me. And by "things like this" I mean people's total and utter incompetence. I was thinking that if I were to start my own insitution of higher learning I think my slogan would be "We're Mildly Serious About Mediocrity" . Sure it's not bold but at least I wouldn't be overselling anyone.