Why?  My company announced Q4 2008 earnings today.  I knew it was going to be bad….but not as bad as it was.  The company burned through half of our cash…..in three months!  Yes, my dear friends, HALF of the cash.  $30M+ …. gone.  Throw in the fact our revenue was $40M less than predicted…..and our quarter was beyond fucked up.  And, all of this before 7:30am!

I listened to the call with my boss, the CIO.  She shared with me her thoughts afterwards – thoughts that included statements about what she thinks about her peers.  I can’t help but quote Gordon Ramsey by saying “we are in the shit”.  He usually uses that phrase when no one seems to realize their business is in crisis.  I’m feeling just as exasperated.  It was nice to hear from the CIO that some of my feelings of where we have gone wrong were dead on with what she believes as well …. but understanding it doesn’t fix it, especially when you are in IT.  The whole analogy of “you can bring the horse to water, but not make them drink” definitely applies.  

At 8:30am, we had an all company meeting which is pretty par for the course on days like today.  First off, I was surprised at how many employees didn’t even read the one page press release.  Many were seeing our loss and the cash thing for the first time.  Now, I’m understanding my boss’s frustration when she has said “are people going to finally realize how critical this is when we can’t make payroll – and it’s too late?!”   Yes, ma’am, I think that appears to be the case.

Then, in an effort by the executives, to show they are in lock step, they did a Q&A session with the employees.  During the Q&A session, the cracks became clear.  Not everyone is in lock step.  There are some major issues with people taking ownership of their functions…I mean true ownership of the failures and not just the successes.  One of the last questions resulted in a conversation that exemplified the point.  

Besides earnings, I’m dealing with a carry over SOX issue from last year.  What should have been resolved very cleanly has resulted in, yet again, another failure.  This issue we keep encountering is what I call IT 101.  It is the easiest and most important part of our jobs, and yet, they can’t seem to do it.  My cohort’s response to me being extremely pissed off about this one: “I’ll have my guys come up with a process document because that’s the issue.”  I pissed him off when I replied “Great, you should do that.  In the meantime, can they do their fucking job?”  In hindsight, probably not the best answer to a self-proclaimed hot head, but this is a pretty big deal. And, it makes us look totally incompetent.   I needed to hear something more than “we’ll create a fucking document”.  

This is going to be a long fucking day at this rate.  Oh, and it’s snowing out which means traffic and everything is also fucked up.  Have I mentioned, I’m in a shitty mood?

Sigh – guess I’ll head over the Another Suburban Mom’s site to make sure I do the right things when I go out to find another job…..she’s had some good info lately…..