f*in blackberry

the curse of the blackberry. My long rant.

After a rough week/month/summer, my MD told us that we're all leaving at 2pm when the markets close to enjoy the long weekend and rest up for another rough week coming up.(credit markets, not equities) I was the last one out the door at 2:30pm when i decided to check my blackberry. 1 new message! I opened it up, and I was CCed on a message to my associate saying she needed one change done to a slide. The slide was attached. I knew my associate left town for the weekend and won't be back. I e-mailed the person requesting the slide asking if my associate sent it to her already. No response. ARG. I took a deep breath in. A slide was attached, but I can't open it up on my blackberry. I thought there could be some kind of guideline or notes on the slide itself. This needed to go out ASAP to the client and I raced up to my desk to open it.

No markups on the slide. ARG. What was I supposed to do. I picked up the phone receiver and banged it on my head for a bit. After my head cleared up for a bit I walked over to the requestor's desk. She's not there!!! WTF. I thought to myself, if it was really important and needed to be done, she'd respond to me. I decided to walk across the street to starbucks to get some coffee. Yes it was still early in the afternoon, but after so many sleep deprived nights, i'm always falling asleep. I was greeted by the friendly barista, when i felt a familiar buzz coming from my hip. MY BLACKBERRY. Message from my associate "Eric, can you take care of this, I'm out of the office".

Loaded up my coffee with sugar and raced back to my desk. After my caffiene buzz, the convulted message finally made sense. There was an argument on an earlier conference call which way we should organize a slide. After a lot of bickering, we finalized it a certain way. I figured that someone complained enough and got her way. So I had to change it to the other way. If only these people could make up their minds, I could be in bed and not slaving over the computer.

Made my changes. Double and triple checked the slide. It was perfectly aligned, no typos and ready to go. Made a quick note on my e-mail about where i got the numbers and sent it out.

the phone rang. It was someone important looking for my MD. I said uh oh. He asked if the group head was there. I peaked around the corner and thank god he was. I passed the call on and packed up my bags and left the office. I knew if I stayed, I'd get staffed on more work.

As I'm walking out of the office an hour later, more buzzing on my blackberry. "Eric, the table in your spread sheet doesn't match your e-mail notes. is it 12.5 or 13.5?" OOPS. I typed the e-mail so fast and my fingers have gotten so fat and stubby that i mistyped. I e-mailed back "12.5". I made the mistake of not hitting reply all. Everyone else on the CC list decided to e-mail me asking for clarification. OKAY OKAY! CHILL! I tried responding as quickly as possible on the tiny blackberry keyboard. I got home uninterrupted and fell napped.

I woke up to a red message indicator light on my blackberry. OH SHIT. Wait - it's friday, research sends out a bunch of messages that I don't want to read. OKAY, i'm fine. I opened my blackberry and it's a message from my MD. "WHERE ARE YOU. I NEED YOU TO COME IN. CALL ME" FUCK! I said to myself. That call that I snuck out of earlier came to bite me in the ass. Okay. I looked at the timestamp. AN HOUR AGO. OH SHIT. I called my MD back, apologized. He said he didn't need me anymore but told me to keep my schedule open during the long weekend because i'll need to come in. SHIT....

Like the other poster, as annoying as the blackberrry is, there is no where else i'd rather be.