Work-Life Balance Scales Broken Again – Tuesday 20 Feb 07

Well the honeymoons over… no more 8 hour days for me. Well not many if tonight is any indication :(

We got to work at 7:30am and left at 8:30pm… its like the old R2 days at the ATO.

As with every project everywhere, no matter how well planned, nor how much preparation there are always going to be days where you’re still staring at a screen long after dinner time should have been and gone.

We’ve gotton to crunch time on the project now. Chris sent around the issue and risk log about a week ago and it lit a fire under the client. We had one of the boss clients tell the development team that she didn’t care if they slept in the office they were not to miss our deadline.

Now at home when we say we’re sleeping at the office we’re exaggerating (even if in B’s case she’s only just exaggerating!). But here we actually had one of the guys show up with a bag with a change of clothes in it. The client boss is totally cracking the whip. They needed the fire to get them working, but by 8pm tonight the quality level was seriously dropping. I decided there was no point them staying any longer when it just meant fixing all the mistakes tomorrow. I told them to pack up, turn off their computers and go home. I walked up and down the floor saying, come on, go home; we’ll finish up in the morning.

Most of them packed up but a couple ended up staying til 10:30pm to get the module finished. They said to me because I’d told them to go home, and they’d chose to stay, they felt less time pressure and therefore could relax and do a higher quality job.

They are about 4 million times more productive at the moment, but I don’t like the whip cracking. Especially since this women is the same one who arrives about 11:30am, leaves before 4pm and plays solitaire during the day. Chris has sent her about 12 emails trying to get the tool we’re creating the course in organised and it wasn’t until he escalated the issue log that she’s done anything about it.

Anyway, I think the next few weeks will be like this, late nights and a stressed out team. I guess it’ll make the difference between hitting our dates and missing them but not all that fun. Plus worst of all, I didn’t have any snacks! I was about ready to eat my own arm by the time I got home! There aren’t any shops near where we work, no vending machines, no snack cupboard. Nothing. I had eaten my lunch and then ate my apple by 3pm and still had 5 whole hours to go without anything else to eat – this is practically unheard of for me.