A colleague saying hi and sending a virtual hug

On Friday, a colleague whom I haven't chatted with for a few months pinged me on Teams. She said hi, wanted to know that I was good, and sent me a hug from afar. It was so sweet of her.

On the whole, our working relationship has been decent. I've been at this company for nearly eleven years and she was there when I started.

We had some rough waters when she transitioned from a quality assurance team lead to a program manager on my team. She was so stressed out that she took some of that out on me and I wouldn't have it.

Eventually, another colleague took over my role on those two teams as I moved over to reviewing everyone's work on our writing team. When this colleague resigned, I had to step back in and complete the work that she hadn't done. That's when the program manager realized how valuable my contributions were and our working relationship went back to what it was before. I completed everything that the previous person had left behind and the program manager was thankful.

Late last year, she was involved in a serious car crash. My manager let me know about it because he knew that we had worked closely together. I sent her e-mails of encouragement and let her know that I was pulling for her.

It's great when you have a lovely chat with someone on a Friday afternoon. She is doing much better these days, which is wonderful news.

The disaster that is a Windows update

On Monday, after I was done work at 4 pm, I had a Windows update on my work laptop that was pending and had it installed. I left my laptop on for another hour before I turned it off for the day.

I started my workday on Tuesday just after 7 am. I woke up too early. In a way, it was good.

I booted up my work laptop. I could not get Microsoft Teams to launch. I needed it to train the new hire. Rebooting and relaunching Teams did not work. I absolutely dislike whenever there's a Windows update. Ideally, it should work. When it's bad, it's incredibly bad.

At 8 am, I started training the new hire. I noticed that no matter what site I was trying to access, I had to enter my username and password, and my credentials could not be authenticated. I then saw a Windows message saying to lock my screen. I did it. Guess what? I was completely locked out of my laptop. Great.

At work, there's a self-serve password reset. I tried it and couldn't connect to the server. Lovely.

I then called the IT helpdesk. The folks there suck. The woman I spoke to said that she couldn't unlock my account and had to pass it over to her colleague. He would call me back. I asked at what number. At my Teams phone number. Um, no. I have Teams on my locked laptop. You can't automatically assume that the phone number on record is accurate. I gave her my cell phone.

I tried logging in after fifteen minutes. Success! I was able to log into my laptop and train. Sadly, I lost an hour of productivity.

The male helpdesk guy called me half an hour after I had logged in. Such a crazy delay! Apparently, since this Windows update happened, many folks have been calling the helpdesk for assistance.

Such a horrible update!

Working quietly and not liking instant messaging interruptions

I have a ton of content to put together for work. It's not difficult work. It's volume. I need to have my work done in over a week's time. I simply like to work quietly without any distractions.

I have a love-hate relationship with instant messaging. Getting messages from folks while I am doing a ton of work throws me off.

At work, we have two messaging apps. We use Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams. I am only on the former because my boss does tabs on when people log on and off. It's sad, but it's a virtual punch card machine.

I work enough hours that I don't really care. I get messaged often, which I don't enjoy. I am the longest-serving employee within our group, so I have a ton of knowledge. Everybody thinks that their work is important. Meanwhile, they don't realize that they may be interrupting work that I am doing that is important to me.

I only log on to Microsoft Teams when I have meetings. I haven't figured out a way to block people I don't enjoy working with yet.

Anyway, there is one project manager who has rubbed me the wrong way for at least two years. I have told her countless times that I prefer e-mails than instant messages. The former gives me time to think. I also write back with details.

She can't absorb e-mails. She wants everything quickly and continues to communicate with me through instant messages. I hate all of that.

I let her know that I am super busy. I copied two of her colleagues who know just how swamped I am with work. They also happen to be my past and present project managers on my team. I let her know calmly that I have shared everything with her and don't have an answer on how she should communicate to folks asking about software delivery. I am simply the person who put the contents of a document together. Delivery of this document is out of my scope once it is published.

Meanwhile, she makes it such a big deal to call and instant message me. If my status says that I am offline and she can't reach me, it's because I'm offline. I don't know what is so unclear about that. If telling her three times that I prefer e-mails doesn't sink in, that's her problem.