A sense of accomplishment.
I swiped my card at the elevator door and stepped in. The doors closed. For a brief second I allowed my eyes to close as well..
…It was 06:30 AM on a Monday morning, it seemed unfair that I had to be in office this early, but this was an emergency.
The elevator doors opened out to a huge, deserted floor. I was not surprised. Nobody came to office this early…
Every floor had a ‘snacks and coffee’ counter. Usually the counter was filled with different kinds of snacks and beverages. But it was empty now. They would not be re-stocked until later in the morning.
I tried turning up the coffee maker, but nothing happened. It seemed to be broken..
“Great!, No Coffee either…”
I made my way over to where all the cubicles were. Vin was already there. He was seated in his cubicle wearing his usual pin-striped shirt. Vin was an electronics engineer by trade but had recently made a transition to IT.
He was always cheerful and had an exasperating positivity which he wielded at will, especially when nobody else was in the mood…
..At the moment though, he was staring nervously into a monitor. He had a few terminals open on the monitor. His laptop was propped up on the side.
It was Vin who had called me in the morning asking If I could pop in to office early to help him out.
“Hi Vin, Good Morning”, I said.
“Hey man!.. I am glad you are here. I need all the help I can get. Most of our servers are down and I need your help to patch them. ” He seemed anxious.
I nodded and pulled up a seat next to him.
I took my laptop out and was setting it up while Vin explained the problem. We had to write a patch and deploy it to all the affected servers before working hours to ensure that there would be no customer impact. I glanced at the time. We still had some time…
The next 20 minutes was spent in silence. The only sound was the tapping of my keyboard.
Soon I had a tiny program ready that would ‘patch’ all the servers within the datacenter…
“Vin. It’s ready. Where should we deploy it first?”
I looked around. Vin was nowhere to be found…
I got up to see where he went...
He had probably gone up to the roof to smoke. It was one of his habits. His reasoning was that since his job was largely sedentary, it was healthy for him to walk up to the roof once in a while. He did not see the irony that the ‘healthy’ walk almost always ended with a cigarette.
“The patch is ready?”, Vin was walking towards me with a cup of coffee in hand. “Yeah” I replied. “I just sent it to you.”
He put his coffee down and sat down. It took him a few minutes to test the patch. “Wow, this might actually work. ” He looked impressed.
“Thanks a bunch!”
“No problem Vin.. always happy to help.”, I replied looking out of the nearby window longingly at the now bright morning..
I could not hide my lack of enthusiasm.
Vin had noticed. He tried cheering me up..
“Do you understand what we just accomplished? We fixed the datacenter…”
…All of our users, when they wake up in a few hours will go about their lives without ever realising how close we were to a disaster.”
“Yeah, I know…“ I was amused at his excitement.
Vin could see that his enthusiasm was lost on me...
He conceded. “You can go home now. I will patch the others”.
I hesitated. I was not sure if he really wanted me to leave.
He looked up. “Hey! I am serious.. you can go. You have helped out enough. I’ve got this now!”
I was just about to turn and leave when I noticed the cup of coffee next to him.
“Vin, how did you get coffee? I thought the coffee machine was broken…”
He glanced up from the terminal. He shook his head.. and said absent-mindedly “Oh yeah, I got it from the coffee machine on the top floor… that was broken too but I fixed it. The filter was mis-aligned. Sometimes that happens when they put it back after cleaning. I just took the top off and readjusted the filter…
“…It works fine now..” he said and held up the coffee cup as if to prove it. He went back to staring at his terminal.
“Bye, Vin see you.. in a few hours..” I called.. walking away.
As I made my way back to the elevators..the coffee machine caught my eye. Maybe I could fix ‘this’ one…
I looked around, there was nobody around..I dropped my bag on the ground, rolled up my sleeves and started tinkering with the coffee machine.
“… open up the lid and re-adjust the filter”.. That was what Vin had said.
It took me a while. But after some tinkering the machine sprung to life..
Yesss… it was working…
With a sense of victory, I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down on one of the nearby tables.
As I sat there I saw a few people were already coming in. The ‘early’ ones.
I saw a woman go towards ‘my’ coffee-machine. She poured herself a cup of coffee and carried it over to her cubicle.
I smiled.
…All of our users, when they wake up in a few hours will go about their lives without ever realising how close we were to a disaster.”
I glanced at my watch. It was 8:30 AM. I had to be in office anyway by 9. I did a quick calculation. Nope. There would be no point going home now.
I put the cup away, slung the bag over my shoulder and got up.
As I walked over to my cubicle, I realised that I was happy…
“Do you understand what we just accomplished? . We fixed the coffee-machine…”
