The Taste of failure….

----Below you will get a brief account of my job in Brussels. A lot of stuff cannot be publicized due to information disclosure restrictions----

It’s amazing how I forgot how it felt like to fail. I got used to things going my way. I mean I don’t always get perfect results, but I haven’t endured a serious fallout for quite a while. But it had to happen some time, and I thank God I only failed myself and not someone else! And most importantly, it was materialistic affecting only this life we live in, although it had a great psychological effect on me.

This is a story about an intern, myself, who got screwed by ‘0.9’!!

Background

I have been working on my project for 9 weeks, for 'the company'. It is the a very big consumer goods company in the world.

I work in the packaging department, on dry laundry (powder detergents) for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA). My project is about reducing the height of the bags which contain the laundry granules like the ones used in homes for brands like -------.
Just to get an insight of how things work here, you’re on your own. Let me elaborate.

I have a supervisor who is responsible for me, and he helps me a lot in terms of general direction of my project planning and providing contacts. But from then on, you have to contact the people, arrange meetings, fix sessions to know about stuff and figure out why and how I want to proceed with my work. From day 1, I had to contact people in my department, on the premises I work at, in Europe and even in other continents. That’s another story I’m not sure I want to talk about!

Progress

My work is based on an excel sheet, which took me 4 weeks to assemble. Of course the Question in your minds is “Why the Hell did it take you 4 weeks for an excel sheet?” and the answer is NOT “Because I’m stupid”!! I had to get data about all SKUs which are over 350, each with about 15 attributes (SKU: Stock keeping unit. An individual color, size, flavor or pack of product that requires a separate code number to distinguish it from other items. ‘the compay runs on Acronyms, they even have a website where there is a database, 4397 as I am writing.’). Did I just copy paste the data? Did I get it all from one source? Was each input done once? To cut a long story short, it was a horribly long and boring excel sheet to complete (21MB with no pictures or anything). This excel sheet calculates how much money the company would save if this project was applied. Why I am talking extensively on the excel sheet will be clear later.

After the first four weeks, I moved on to more slightly interesting stuff, like technical drawings and test plans, but all 100% based on the savings excel sheet. I can’t say it was going great, because it never was for me in this internship, however it was quite ok. The most challenging thing was to schedule a test in one of the plants, because getting time on the line was extremely difficult because it meant losing money. But I had significant savings in my sheet, and I was one phone call away from getting the line time I wanted.

Week 9, Day 3 – Wednesday 12th of August

Excel is all about numbers. It’s a program mainly used for calculations. Subsequently my work on it was mainly mathematical equations. Two of these carried the greatest significance, and one of them takes credit for me boring you here.

I chose one of the two to work on, and was calling the plant next morning. I was doing mockups for a presentation, when I discovered something was wrong, and when I corrected it…..Here is where the ‘0.9’ comes in, see I misplaced the number.
Instead of dividing the equation by 0.9 I multiplied it by 0.9, which gave me shorter length and subsequently greater savings. Hence my savings went back to almost one sixth to what they were. For the mathematically deprived people, this means that if I had 600$ of savings, now I had 100$. Of course these aren’t the real numbers, but with the numbers I had, in the company's terms, I don’t have a case.

If this happened in the first weeks while I was in the first weeks, this would have been completely fine; but after 9 weeks and all this things built on my sheet, it was a disaster!

I went through every sheet, every row, every column, every cell, every equation, every number…..maybe something else was wrong that will make everything right again….!!! but nothing….I was on my desk till they closed the lights (8pm, the latest normal employees leave is 6, company is open for employees 24/7) and stayed on the corridor light for a while more. I gave up, got my laptop and everything and went back home.

I felt horrible; I couldn’t remember when I last felt this bad. I had stomach ache, I didn’t eat for 24 hours, I had a constant urge to vomit, I felt hot like in a sauna and I was repeating all the prayers (ad3eya) I know for these kind of situations non-stop. I arrived home, prayed and tried to do anything else; but failing to do so I slept….(The one thing I can do at any time at any circumstance is sleep, a blessing and a curse. This time a huge blessing!)

I kept asking myself, am I panicking?!! I don’t panic!!.....Am I blaming myself for what happened??.....What shall I do? Confront my boss of course…How will he take it?
I removed all my personal stuff that I had on the work laptop, tidied my room, checked my passports and removed the keychain I had on my drawer keys; prepared for anything to happen the next morning. I almost called my boss on the mobile to make sure he was coming tomorrow so I can tell him. I had a very big part of my brain sure that the last day of my internship is tomorrow, I even thought about how will I give them their money back; although the working part of my mind was telling me that was quite unlikely.

You can – or can’t – imagine what was going in my mind until I was asleep that night….we’ll get to that later….

Week 9 Day 4 – Thursday 13th of August, The Aftermath

Woke up early, the earliest since late June, feeling exactly the same as I slept. Dragged myself to the shower, knowing I’m getting closer to my doomed fate. To the company; on the metro feeling as horrible as the last time I was on it some 10 hours ago. Arrived at work, waited for my supervisor to come, and then told him the story.
His reaction was controlled; however I could see the disappointment. He told me to look at everything again carefully and recommend what to do now. Since that moment, I started feeling much better. It’s like I was running up stairs and I reached the top, very tired but relieved.

I knew the game wasn’t over, I knew it all along, although at some points my mind had put it to me that way.But for the rest of the day, I had a much clearer mind.

It all clears up….Almost!

The next morning, the discussion took place, and it was clear there was no good solution. But to find something to keep me busy for the next 4 weeks, some sort of plan was agreed upon. I was thinking…‘Thank God; that could have turned out a lot worse’.

So after 2 days of going through the sheet extensively, the other formula was looking fishy as well. I made some calls and emails, and then I THE document. And turned out I had the other one wrong as well. In the end – lots of phone calls, emails, discussions – there seemed to be something there. In the words of my supervisor “OH, So there is still Hope”. My response was “There is always hope” and that came out so naturally, that I am sure it was not my mind speaking….!

So Life goes on, and my project is progressing.....time passes and I'm approaching the end of my 3 months....and I am trying to do my best.

And all the above is about….

You question yourself, you get doubts, and the horizon looks like a never-ending road. You stop believing for seconds, only to find out that that’s the only thing you have. You wonder how things can ever be ok again, with the knowledge that it will be in no time temporarily blocked out of your brain. You keep thinking of how this could have been avoided, neglecting that it shouldn’t. You never stop thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow, forgetting the fact that you can do nothing about it.
Why is it that we forget who is in control?? Why is it that we think we know it all?? Why is it that we keep rubbing our eyes till we don’t see no more, upping the volume till we hear no more?….Why continue eating more until we lose the taste, dreaming and dreaming with no ambition to take the further step??

Nothing is permanent. Not success and certainly not failure. But a reality check for me was needed. Life is a series of events, and it’s God’s mercy that every person has it in him to pass through. It’s the person himself who chooses – in times of ease and difficulties alike – what to do, who and what to rely on, how to react and how much to learn. For me life is a very good teacher, and I claim to be a good student. At least in front of myself I can say I reacted well enough, didn’t attempt stupid or half solutions (like hiding and getting through the last weeks. YES, it poped in my mind of course!), relied on whom I trusted, did what my conscious told me to do and got one big lesson out of it.

I sincerely believe that whatever happens is for the best, no matter how it looks in the beginning….but that’s me…and another story.…

Over Wa Domtom….

P.S. They work! I mean the prayers….Here are the ones I know….There are many more….May God bless you all…:))
لا إله إلا أنت سبحانك اني كنت من الظالمين
اللهم أجرني في مصيبتي واخلفني خيرا منها
اللهم اني لا أسألك رد القضاء ولكني أسألك اللطف فيه