Before a certain illness sent the world workforce home, we employees operated in huge buildings with cubicles, phones, computers, printers, drawers filled with paper plates and napkins, and cabinets for smoker’s coats and non-smoker’s coats.
My office also had huge screens hanging throughout the department, and on which our call center statistics were displayed. In addition, we had slides relevent to our jobs and designed to bring us together as a department. I was in charge of preparing those slides.
We were preparing to go with a new vendor, and training had barely begun back in March 2020 when we were exiled to our houses to work. Ultimately the building I worked in was shut down, mothballed and vacated, but we learned that our displays could be accomplished on our computers, so the process began to license individual viewers, train us in producing and editing the boards, and finally testing the program.
My former boss and I were the two trainees for the system, so after the duo became a solo, I was left with the responsibility of working with the boards’ production company and a few selected test subjects from our department to see how the system worked. It took a few weeks to work out the kinks. Nobody could actually summon the system, including me. The IT staff were boggled, but then when dealing with strings of computer commands, IT’s mission is to be boggled. Finally the coding was completed, the errors fixed and we began the odyssey of producing message boards for users in two departments. We have used the system for a year already.
I have found joy in assembling the slides for the project. Once a month, I put together visual guides to our co-workers’ birthdays and anniversaries, as well as monthly scrolling text, ego-boosters and more. Overall, our departments enjoyed about two minutes of content each month, all lovingly assembled by yours truly.
During a lull in the usual reporting and other duties I normally do when I’m not enjoying putting together board content, I assembled what I would need for 2025 in terms of positive messages from corporate icons such as CEOs and specialist speakers on topics of interest to workers. I had a rhythm going with the slide content, and the harmony of it was good for the soul. It’s wonderful when things work.
Occasionally the network would need a reboot, and I would send word out to the users that it would be restored soon. I would get a polite thank you, and soon the system would be updating data and entertaining the masses.
Then I was present at a management and supervisory meeting as notetaker this past week, and the subject of disseminating information came up. I piped up and volunteered to add content to our message boards so it would be accessible to us, since the department took up the majority of licensed viewers.
The department manager then said simply, “Oh, the boards are dead. We didn’t renew the contract.”
There is no moment so embarassing than when you are the first line on a project, but the last to know the latest about it. I sat there on Zoom, in front of about a dozen participants, and I didn’t even have a certain lower body part to have in my hand (to coin a phrase) and complete the humiliation. Fortunately I did not have my video on, or I would’ve looked like a fish on land breathing its last.
So when I had the chance to talk to my direct manager, I found out the horrible truth. Back when the boards were on overhead monitors, they were a constant presence that one could see or ignore. Once the information was placed onscreen on monitors, it was an annoyance which could be completely ignored by not signing into it at all. With all the applications our agents were already using, the display took last place. After reviewing the usage data, the only regular viewers were my manager and myself.
It’s a case of holding a party that nobody attended.
The experience was great while it lasted, and at least part of my efforts–the birthdays and anniversaries–still appear on another platform. And I know for a fact that people see them, because the slides are copied to at least one department at the start of each month.
I also enjoyed the work involved. It will be replaced by other tasks, which are already pending training for me and a few others. I guess when one monitor goes off, another one comes on.
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