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My softball team from last year didn’t end up coming together again. Most of the guys found new teams, and I ended up on one with the Pharmacy guys from work, most of whom I don’t know. I tried to organize a few practices, but only a few people showed. Needless to say, it didn’t surprise me when we weren’t that great defensively. After losing our first 3 games, we really needed a win to keep the season from becoming monotonous.

Enter today with questionable weather and exactly 10 players available. It rained off and on from late morning to mid afternoon, but MSCR posted on their website that all games were still on and would play by umpire’s decision if there was more rain. So of course it started raining steadily about 6:30pm with no signs of stopping. I ate dinner, got dressed and started heading toward the field. On the way I got a text from one of my friends on the team saying there’s no way we were playing tonight. However, as I drove up to the park, the lights were on and the previous game was underway. Another guy who was already there said our game was still on. I called a few people to make sure they were still coming, and we started warming up in the steady rain.

Now the question became whether each team would have enough players. The max for the field is 10 (more can bat) and you can play with as few as 8, though it’s pretty tough. As game time drew nearer, all 10 of our guys showed up but they only had 7. Since everyone was already out there soaking wet, we didn’t really want to win via forfeit, so we sent one of our guys to their team and had a legal game.

Turns out, the field wasn’t as bad as it could have been because the infield was comprised mostly of sand. The rain actually stopped for a while during the game and when it did start again it was lighter than before. We actually played pretty solid defense for the first time all season and our offense was doing a good job of finding the holes (they played with 3 infielders and 3 outfielders). We had a big lead going into the 6th, but then they started finding the gaps as well and put up enough runs to take the lead in the top of the 7th (final inning). They were up one going into the bottom of the inning, so we needed 2 runs to win the game. Through a series of hits (including one by our slowest runner), we managed to load the bases and then pitcher walked in the tying run.

So now there’s 2 outs, bases loaded. The game is tied. Who’s up? That would be me. Cliche I know, but it’s true. I’d already had a pretty good night with a single and a double. I’d been able to pick a spot and hit it in my previous at bats, so I figured why not look for the biggest opening and see if I could hit it. Their shortstop was playing just to the left side of second and the first baseman was shaded toward second, but not far from his regular spot which left a big gap at second - bingo. Surprisingly enough, I hit the spot perfectly for a seeing eye single that brought home our slowest runner and won the game. Walk off, baby. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

First, let me apologize for anyone left hanging after my last post. I’ve had some time to reflect and while it’s very true that a lot is changing for me at work, I’ve decided I’m actually pretty happy about it. So here it is - I’ve been assigned a new customer. This new customer is fairly large and requires a significant amount of handholding. They also use both billing applications supported by our team and use a configuration that I have little to no experience with. In a way, it’s a compliment of sorts that I was picked to take them on because the team leads wanted an experienced person they knew could handle it. However, because the customer can take as much as 20 hours per week, there’s no way I can keep most of my current customers (I have 6).

Here’s where the unfortunate part comes in. I just helped a customer go live at their last 3 hospitals, so transitioning off of their support team now would be very poor timing. We’ll call them customer A. Even though I wouldn’t mind giving them up, I can understand why they would be a poor choice to transition to someone else right now. They are nice people, but kind of a pain to work with because of their strict (read: sometimes blatantly stupid) change control process. Well, I’m stuck with them.

So that leaves 5 other customers that could potentially go to someone else but the way the team leads saw it, there was only one logical choice. Keep the customer mentioned above and the customer that takes the least amount of time. We’ll call the latter customer B. Of course customer B is my least favorite group out of all 6 of them. Needless to say, when I heard this, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. I asked if I had a choice in which customers to keep and was basically told I could keep customer B or the next closest in amount of time spent at another 2.5 hours per week. We’ll call them customer C and this group just happens to be a group I like.

So there was my only real choice in all the changes coming my way - take less time with a customer I don’t like (B), or more time with a customer I enjoy working with (C). Out of 5 transitions in my future, it didn’t seem like much of a choice. On top of that, one of the customers I haven’t mentioned yet happens to be my favorite and it seemed pretty clear I couldn’t keep them. After talking it over with Amber, I decided to go with C, suck up the time difference, and be rid of B within a month or two. The only thing that really hung me up was the idea that I’d been given the opportunity to drop my customer load as much as possible and I was considering passing it up. In the end, Amber and I decided I’d probably be happier with customer C even if it was more time consuming.

After a few days as things started to sink in I decided that this really isn’t a bad thing except for the unfortunate part about losing my favorite customer. I was already thinking some sort of change would be nice around my 3 year anniversary (next week), I just wasn’t thinking it would be this major. Most of my current customers are going to newer people, so the transitions may not be a cakewalk. Finally, there’s only 6 more days to complete the transition that kicked this all off. The next few weeks are going to be super busy, but I’m excited about what work will be like once I’m actually down to 3 customers. Time will tell.

I just got out of my first one on one meeting with my team lead in over a month (she’s been on sabbatical). Let’s just say the entire complexion of my job is about to change (and change fast!) and I don’t have much choice in what’s going to happen. I’m not sure how I feel right now. Not supposed to talk about it yet; more details to come shortly…