One of the fun things about working for a nationally recognized bank is the incredible array of e-mails that I am bombarded with on a daily basis. My favorite kinds are the ones that state the obvious.
Today we arrived at work and were greeted by e-mails that warned us that many account balances were posting incorrectly on our system. Not long later, the entire system went down. For bankers in the 21st century, this is a crippling thing. We do everything with our computers. We run your transactions, we process your withdrawals, we make your payments, we look up your account numbers... when the system crashes, these simple procedures are impossible.
Roughly ten minutes after our bank-wide computer program went down, I began to wonder why we hadn't received an e-mail informing us that the program had gone down. Because that usually seems to be the first thing that happens when something like that happens. Someone out there gets the bright idea to send an e-mail to everyone working for the bank everywhere in the country to let them know what they already know: the computers aren't working right.
They don't send along any helpful information. Those obvious e-mails never tell us what the problem is, nor do they give us an estimated time to expect the problem to be resolved.
Eventually, after a few hours of chaos, the system was restored to its normal state. Of course, we all received another obvious e-mail informing us that the system was back up and running.
I need more people in my life who will tell me things I already know.
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