The past few working days have been unbelievably annoying and so I felt the need to vent a little bit. Basically, for the first time in 17 years (according to my managing editor) the entire Houston office experienced a full-on computer virus outbreak. I walked into work on Tuesday morning and was told not to plug in my computer (I use a laptop that I insert into a loading dock). I sat around for a complete 3 hours, doing absolutely nothing as I watched the IT people run around like chickens with their heads cut off.
Once it hit 11 a.m. and I realized there was no way we were going to make deadline unless we started writing pronto, I told my manager we better just go home and try to work remotely. I don't know why I honestly thought the IT department would figure things out and fix things quickly. That would be too easy.
We are lucky because most of the programs we use to do our research are web-based. Therefore, we were still able to use those sites at home to get the information we needed. However, we were unable to use the program where we actually write and publish our articles. We also couldn't access the shared drive that we use to post maps so Denver (our headquarters) could get them and format them into our stories. I can't express enough how frustrating it was to find as many loopholes as possible to get
something out. We ended up writing our stories in Word and emailing them along with the attachments of maps to Denver and left it to them to do double the work to put it into a normal publishing form. Of course each of us only got two stories written when we usually each write a minimum of four.
The next day, after receiving a voice-messaging system alert at 5:55 a.m. announcing that everything had been solved and we can return to work, I walked in and my editor told me once again not to plug in my computer. Apparently everyone who had, ended up still getting the virus. And so after one hour of waiting on IT to say something, I walked back out and went home to work. This time I was able to access the network. Everything was so freaking slow though and IT was threatening shutting the network down again, so I had to work as fast as humanly possible (with the slowest remote programs in the world) to get my stories out. Three stories took the entire day, but the network never went down on me. After they were published, I was exhausted.
Today I walked in and no one was saying anything. I wasn't sure how to interpret that. I hadn't been told much the past few days so it wasn't necessarily an "all systems go" kind of thing. I ended up deciding to take my chances and plug my computer in. So far so good. swaeho[gtno[inmg. Just kidding.
The other writer in my department (who has a brand new computer) seems to have gotten infected and is dealing with the IT department to get things straightened out. He found out that half of our office still has the virus. What the heck? Why can't they solve this?
I think I have two main problems with this whole debacle. No. 1: The IT department has had the poorest communication in the universe when it came to instructing employees what to do and what not to do. It was my decision both days this week to work from home because I didn't want to risk getting infected. Had I not gone with my instincts, my computer was very likely to have gotten infected. I would have appreciated much more than a little flier that was posted on one door outside the elevators stating there was a problem and IT was working to resolve the issue. I have no idea how many IT employees there are here but I know there are enough to at least make some rounds explaining what was happening and what we should be doing about it. I mean come on. This is a large corporation that depends on communication to function. Why was this element so lacking in one of the largest crises our office has ever faced.
No. 2: Why did we even have this problem to begin with? Our world today basically runs off of technology. It would not function without it. The United States is touted for being so advanced in the technological world and the people here stand proud of how much more efficient we are because of technology. Why then, are things as fundamental as computer viruses even capable of infecting an entire corporate office? Why is this company shelling out thousands, if not millions, of dollars per year to fund the top technological experts who can't even prevent or for-see a computer virus from taking over an entire office? Maybe my expectations are too high. But come on. Aren't we past this in our technologically advanced world?
I'm still not out of the water with this virus. It's very possible my computer is getting attacked as I type. All I have received communication-wise is another flier mentioning that the issue is still not solved. Great. Thanks for the instructions.
