Guest Blog: Just when I think I'm in, they pull me back out!
I love stories like this... mainly because this kind of thing happens where I work all the time. It's usually an honest mistake; someone just isn't paying attention. But it sets into motion a chain of events - all beginning with that one person, sitting staring wide eyed at their monitor in disbelief. At the end of the chain are people either really pissed off or those who take great amusement in watching the train wreck. (yep, I am just that link in the chain)
So the head of admissions at UC Berkeley's Law school is training a new staff member. This obviously is a school that has thousands of applicants. He shows this trainee how to send a message through its system - one that's inviting people who received early admittance to a party in their honor. But he effed up - instead of sending the message to the 500 students it was meant for, the message went to about 4,000 people. They then had to send out an apology along with a retraction letter.
If this had happened where I work, the chain of events would have gone down differently. First, we don't bother training people, so the whole mess could have been avoided. Second, the guy would never have realized what he did (because he never got trained, remember?). Third, no one would have realized the error until someone who got the message replied saying "umm, huh?"
And this point, the following would happen here... someone would forward the message to me, demanding an explanation, because this was an electronic communication, certainly I must somehow know something about it (lots of stuff here apparently happens by osmosis). They would also copy in every senior executive in the company, because clearly that's the only way that anyone responds to anything. Everyone email recipient on this message would forward to other people - marked urgent - and so on and so on, so that half of the employees in the company are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Everyone then blames the IT group - because isn't everything their fault?
Finally, someone figures out what happened. But now, since senior execs are involved, the decision as to the resolution grinds to a halt. We should form a committee. Have a meeting. Hire a consultant (to borrow our watch and then tell us what time it is). Meanwhile, the goofball who was at fault is sitting at his desk, either completely oblivious that there's any problem or just counting on the fact everyone blames IT. They never step up and take responsibility; just wait for others to fix it.
Two weeks later, on the day of the party, we'd send interns over to break the bad news.
How long did it take Berkeley to undo their mess? 20 minutes - and that includes the writing of the retraction (remember, we're talking about a school of lawyers here). Not too shabby.
posted by Cherry Indigo (Cindy) @ 2/23/2006 02:50:00 PM
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