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Death march with video cards.
Mar. 18th, 2013 11:32 pmDear Halford, I am exhausted.
A certain well-known maker of graphics cards (which is headquartered about a quarter mile from where I live) is having its annual Big Thing at the San Jose Convention Center. They have invited just about every geek on the planet. They're using us for ground transportation.
A huge wave of business; good thing, right? We make loads of money, our drivers get lots of work, and everyone is happy. Or so you'd expect. The problem is that the people who were charged with setting everything up couldn't organize an orgy in a whorehouse. We literally had dozens of people reserved, and the "organizers" kept making changes, not giving us contact information, and forgetting little details like what fucking flights people were on so we could meet them!
Tova, the Boss Lady, was already worn to a frazzled nub last week. Then the onslaught began on Saturday. You know it's going to be bad when the very first person on this extensive list of passengers no-shows. It got worse. Along with multiple people who never showed up (Hamed, one of our better drivers and a guy I really like as a person, had four no-shows from this group) we also had several drivers who called in from the airport after encountering several people heading to the conference with no reservations. The planners had specified that our drivers have signs with the conference name instead of the passenger name. My nightmare was having one town car (maximum capacity three passengers) at the airport and 4+ conference guests show up. We also had to accommodate our usual passenger load. We farmed out a butt-load of trips.
Our drivers suffered from going from 3-4 trips a day to 5 or 6, with multiple add-ons, but in the office we've been in a constant state of stress due to the fact that we've been dealing with a huge load of arrivals. We don't control the airlines, and if United 931 is 77 minutes late, we need to make adjustments. Multiply that by 11-12 drivers (Al, one of the owners had to drive a couple of days this weekend) with 5 or so arrivals, and you can see where one plane coming in early or late can cause a nightmare cascade of changes, all of which the dispatcher (yours truly) needs to get out to the drivers.
They're exhausted. The dispatchers are exhausted. The owners are beyond exhausted.
But the wave has passed. We survived.
Until Friday.
When they start going home. En mass.
whimper
A certain well-known maker of graphics cards (which is headquartered about a quarter mile from where I live) is having its annual Big Thing at the San Jose Convention Center. They have invited just about every geek on the planet. They're using us for ground transportation.
A huge wave of business; good thing, right? We make loads of money, our drivers get lots of work, and everyone is happy. Or so you'd expect. The problem is that the people who were charged with setting everything up couldn't organize an orgy in a whorehouse. We literally had dozens of people reserved, and the "organizers" kept making changes, not giving us contact information, and forgetting little details like what fucking flights people were on so we could meet them!
Tova, the Boss Lady, was already worn to a frazzled nub last week. Then the onslaught began on Saturday. You know it's going to be bad when the very first person on this extensive list of passengers no-shows. It got worse. Along with multiple people who never showed up (Hamed, one of our better drivers and a guy I really like as a person, had four no-shows from this group) we also had several drivers who called in from the airport after encountering several people heading to the conference with no reservations. The planners had specified that our drivers have signs with the conference name instead of the passenger name. My nightmare was having one town car (maximum capacity three passengers) at the airport and 4+ conference guests show up. We also had to accommodate our usual passenger load. We farmed out a butt-load of trips.
Our drivers suffered from going from 3-4 trips a day to 5 or 6, with multiple add-ons, but in the office we've been in a constant state of stress due to the fact that we've been dealing with a huge load of arrivals. We don't control the airlines, and if United 931 is 77 minutes late, we need to make adjustments. Multiply that by 11-12 drivers (Al, one of the owners had to drive a couple of days this weekend) with 5 or so arrivals, and you can see where one plane coming in early or late can cause a nightmare cascade of changes, all of which the dispatcher (yours truly) needs to get out to the drivers.
They're exhausted. The dispatchers are exhausted. The owners are beyond exhausted.
But the wave has passed. We survived.
Until Friday.
When they start going home. En mass.
whimper
