This work week was a "perfect storm" that literally culminated with a perfect storm ... and a lightning strike zapping my office building.
It started off as a week that promised to be stressful ... one boss was on vacation, the other was returning from vacation, we had an emergency project that had to be out the door by Thursday evening, we had a pretty crucial meeting scheduled for Thursday afternoon, and I was moving into a new office. But we knew that everything could get done as long as nothing crazy happened ... like getting struck by lightning and losing power for a day.
But lose power we did. It's always interesting to see how people react in those kinds of situations. And how they dress. Even though most of the company got to come to work three hours late, there still seemed to be a lot of the rolled-out-of-bed look. Like the act of dressing up for work -- or at least brushing hair, putting on shoes that aren't flip flops and shirts that aren't Hawaiian, etc. -- on a late arrival day is just too exhausting to consider. It's almost like senior skip day. Except nobody's a senior and nobody's about to be out for summer. Because work is year round and there is no summer. But back to the blackout ... there will always be the people who still want to work, so they will track down flashlights, windows, candles, lighters, the glow of a cell phone or iPod, and anything else that will allow them to be productive. Then there are the people who will use the opportunity to sneak out under the cover of darkness and run errands, chill at Starbucks, catch a matinee, Costanza it under their desk, what have you. I'm a hybrid of the two. I would like to sneak out, but I seem to always be on a deadline when these kinds of things happen. Or I at least seem to be around people who could get me into trouble if I actually left. In the morning, my team was able to (translation: forced to) have a really long, productive meeting (the office building next door was nice enough to lend us their conference room). But throughout the day, the power kept shutting off for an hour at a time. So while we waited for the power to come back on, I moved offices in the dark. But I also used the opportunity to catch up with some friends at work. It's the closest thing to a blackout party any of us have experienced.
In the end, we regained power, completed all of our assignments, met all of our deadlines, and (truth be told) had fun in the process. But more importantly, our little lightning strike forced us to slow down. Sure we tried to take shortcuts and rush through our projects, trying to work around a power outage and frantic about the "valuable" time we were losing. But it proved impossible. In our attempts to stay in control of the situation we ultimately realized that we're never fully in control. The metaphor for powerlessness was not lost on us.
