it begins, and oh does it ever begin

Okay, guys, I’m about to really go under. And I am not sure that I will be able to emerge again for at least the next three weeks or so.

It’s 9:30. I’m still at work. I was here until 7:30 last night. I am hoping with all my heart that I can take tomorrow afternoon off, but it’s all going to depend on what I can get done in the next 18 hours or so. I’m sitting here making extra copies of sections of training manuals to supplement the old training manuals that don’t have these sections so that people who don’t get the new training manuals don’t get shafted during training next week. I’m praying that the copier doesn’t run out of paper because I am on the last ream and we haven’t had more delivered yet. I have two hours of advance training in the morning for some staff members who will not be here on Monday so that they don’t fall behind and can catch right up on Tuesday when they are back. I am not actually a trainer or anything quite yet, but I know enough that I think I can lead them through.

Even though these three weeks of training and deployment have literally been scheduled since June, I am having staff members show up left and right who have no idea what’s going on and, in fact, may not even realize we’re undergoing a data conversion. So I’ve been trying to get everyone straight and make accommodations for those people who need them when it’s appropriate. One of my two consultants got reassigned to another project and so now I have a new consultant on the project whom I’ve never met or spoken to and she’s in LA where the last guy was coming from Texas. So I need to make new hotel reservations for her that will include a weekend and our sales rep at the hotel hasn’t gotten back to me and I fear there will be no room at the inn and I will have to scramble to get something else set up. At least my main consultant, who’s awesome and has been working with us since May, is still with us and has his hotel stuff all straight.

I’ve been checking with IT constantly to make sure that the data submission is going smoothly and to remind them to turn off the current systems for at least the duration of the data freeze. I have been asking them 8,000,000 questions about things. I’ve been answering questions and providing supplemental auxiliary tables and conversion instructions for the programmer in South Carolina when necessary. I had to have our IT people reinstall the software on all 25 training computers earlier this week and right now I am afraid they aren’t working properly so in a few minutes I have to go over to the lab and start checking the workstations to make sure things are good, and put in an emergency support call if they aren’t good.

I am sending emails and phone calls like mad to remind people not to add or change anything in the current systems, and to tell them about the training agenda next week, and when it starts and ends and where to go and what to wear and what to bring. I’ve been reminding them about the deployment agenda and helping people figure out exactly what applies to them and helping other people decide if they can be out of the office on X day or schedule a meeting at Y time. I need to take care of things like these workbooks, and antibacterial wipes for the computer lab, and coffee service for Monday, and a billion other things. I’ve had to shuffle things around several times for the upper level administrators because they’re super busy and don’t have a lot of control over their schedules. We have more flexibility but it’s still tough sometimes to make sure I’m not scheduling things against each other. I’m trying to help everyone else avoid getting stressed out so that this goes as smoothly as possible.

They’ve been saying for months that it’s my job to worry, and let me tell you, I am doing a bang-up job of it. I kind of feel like I’m planning a wedding. Actually, I think that planning a wedding might be pretty easy compared to this. Oh man, I’m tired already.

Wish me luck. I think I am going to need a lot of it.