I had a little moment today.

A little background.

At work, we have a client who requests that we upload our submissions to their website. There are different places to upload these documents and it is solely my responsibility at our company to upload the submissions to this website.

Well, after running a few reports it was brought to my attention that I had incorrectly uploaded 3 documents to the wrong (project) site. For instance, I had uploaded the Lease Exhibit for site FL-MIA1010 to the place where documents for CO-DEN1010 are supposed to go. Quick aside here – I think that the 3 errors is a pretty small number compared to the nearly 1,000 documents that I have uploaded correctly. But still these 3 errors needed to be rectified.

A downfall of this website is that once a document is uploaded, the document cannot be deleted except by the support team of the website. I have no ability to delete the documents. I know this because several months ago, I sent them an email asking how to delete any documents and they said, “Send us an email with blah, blah information and we’ll take care of it for you.”

So that is what I did.

The first response I received was one saying that the issue had been marked as resolved and the ticket closed. The next response gave some very elementary instructions on how to delete the files and an alternative (overwriting the document – basically replacing what I had uploaded with another document).

Hmm…if the first instructions were going to work, why would they give me an alternative? And I had, in the past, tried the solution suggested with no success. But I push those thoughts aside. I rationalize that there had been upgrades to the site since my last attempts at deleting files so perhaps this was an issue addressed in those upgrades. And I had not actually tried to delete them myself this time and had just automatically emailed support. So I gave it a shot.

No success.

And the alternative offered was of no help to me as we did not have documents to replace what had been uploaded. In fact, those sites belonged to other contractors entirely. Anyway, not helpful and irrelevant to the request I had made to the support team. So this was my response email:

“I’m sorry but none of your suggestions have resolved the issue. I was following the instructions I received per the attached email.
Please remove the documents.”

I attached the original email from their very own support team telling me to contact them to delete the files.

Apparently, this irritated the support guy. I know this because he called me and sounded quite irritated.

Another side note here: I recognize that most IT professionals believe that people are idiots. I know this because I was (briefly) married to an IT professional and from the stories conveyed to me, it did in fact seem that most people are idiots. I, however, am NOT an idiot.

Now, I did convey to him – let’s call him Bob – I did demonstrate to Bob my knowledge of the website. I wont go in to too much detail (hey what a first) but lets just say that Bob’s tone changed a bit when he realized that I was not a first time uploader. So Bob tries to walk me through his original suggestion. Having done all this before, I’m tempted not to reenact this failure but I do to humor him. So when we reach the end and the satisfaction becomes clear in his voice, I mention to him the dialog box that has popped up with the error. I read the error to him.

“Oh,” he says. “You got an error on your end, huh?”

Um, yeah.

Then he launches in to the fact that I could replace the documents blah, blah, blah. I attempt to calmly explain why that alternative isn’t really an option but am becoming more and more irritated that he wont just delete the damn files.

I wonder if he thinks I’m trying to delete someone else’s work. Maybe that’s why he’s hesitant. So I let him know that it was ME who uploaded those documents and I have uploaded them to the correct sites so now want to delete my mistake. I even try to score some sympathy by adding that my boss is on my ass to get these three errors cleaned up (which is not a lie).

Then he says it.

“We don’t like to delete files here on the support end.”

“I know, Bob, but I CANT delete the files and have an email from your department telling me that the way for me to do it is to contact you to do it.”

“Well, yes, but we like to keep the files pristine.”

Ok. Now I’m past irritated. He has wasted enough of my time. So I reply in my calmest, most rational voice,

“There are documents for a site in Florida uploaded to a site in Denver, Bob. That is hardly pristine. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Finally, he concedes. He deletes the documents. He is very short but not rude as he asks me if I am pleased with the result. I confirm that I am.

And I am pleased.

And I am not an idiot.

It’s just nice to have a small victory every now and then.

I’m just saying…