Technical difficulties

I showed up to work on Monday, very excited for my team to make a big push to finish up a lot of our collections. And then, Monday actually happened. 

Turns out, there are some ongoing technical difficulties, and all the systems we need to do our work are down. And have been all week, and may be into next week. 

Ordinarily, this would be no biggie. My last job, there was a day when the internet went down for several hours. Me? I just kept on working with my paper stuff. No web required. For a lot of it, no computer required.

But not so much in my current institution, which has made this week a bit of a challenge. Not because I don't have plenty to work on. The real challenge has been finding work for 2 interns and 2 FTEs under me to work on. 

Most of us agree that, under the circumstances, it really doesn't make a ton of sense for us to be going to work at all. Couldn't at least some of us just have an unexpected paid vacation? Honestly, after the pandemic, we could all use a bit of a break, and we'd come back in a better state of mind, which long-term, would benefit everyone. 

However, I do understand the difficulties of paying employees to do nothing. Really, I do. At best, one or two days might be okay, but after that, I would start to feel a little...well, I'd start to feel a bit guilty. And honestly, the situation feels vaguely familiar--the pandemic started out this way too (although we had a bit of lead time to strategize. And access to the tools). Encouragingly, that is a good indication that we'll figure out how to navigate this time. And it will be much shorter than the pandemic, at least. 

Anyway. It does make work a weird and kind of dull experience. I think I'll try to enjoy it while it lasts.