Wednesday=Fail

Today was far from my best day.

We had our annual Worldwide Employee Teleconference with the CEO this morning. It's broadcast all over the world to all of the locations we do business. I was asked to book several rooms here in Houston for our employees to view the teleconference. No prob. I do that fifty a hundred times a day! But when I communicated the rooms with the meeting organized, I transposed the building numbers. So all the perfectly listed rooms in Building A were actually in Building B and vice versa. Lucky for me that communication went out to 9,000 people. Awesome.

Lunch.

Then a little later I notice a spot in the ceiling above my co-worker's desk. So, I call the Service Center and have a maintenance ticket created and ask for someone to come check it

out right away. I hang up the phone and hear rain. I asked

my co-worker, "Do you hear that? It sounds like rain. Is it raining?". He answers that he doesn't think so. So I get up to investigate. In the room behind me, I walk into this...

And water is literally raining down near the windows! So, I stepped up the urgency of the call over the radio. Within minutes, my floor is alive with activity, trying to stop the crisis. Meanwhile, the spot above my co-worker's desk has worsened and the water is threatening our other co-worker's laptop. So we start unplugging equipment and moving desks. The next two hours were a blur of assessing the situation, managing the scheduled meetings for tomorrow, and (number one) making safety our top priority.

This adjacent room completely flooded and started flooding it's neighboring video conferencing room.

How it looked when I found it

An hour later

The water kept creeping and creeping.

How it looked when I found it.

An hour later

With meetings moved and my team and I moved into a temporary workstation...

My "Command Center"

...which is basically my desk pushed up to a conference table (sigh), there wasn't much more I could do.

I need to arrive early tomorrow to help make sure all the other meetings on the floor are taken care of and re-assess the situation. I'm stressed and worried and can't find sleep yet. That 4:30am alarm will come too

soon!

It's amazing how everything can be fine, business-as-usual one moment and within seconds, you're dealing with a crisis that will impact your work for an indefinite period.

Thursday morning update: I'm frustrated, discouraged, and very nervous about what I'm walking into at work today. If you pray, please do!

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