No Y2Play on New Year's Eve
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Never mind Times Square. There's only one place for network professionals to ring in the new year this Dec. 31 - at the office.
"Everyone wants to be here to make sure their systems work," says Lyn McDermid, chief information officer of Virginia Power in Richmond.
McDermid says she had more volunteers for the critical 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift on Dec. 31 than she needed: "We've had an extraordinary response."
"A lot of people say this is the place to be on New Year's Eve," agrees Deanna Baker, director of the Y2K project within the IT department at United Airlines in Chicago. "Our people want New Year's to hurry up and get here. We're ready."
The atmosphere at most corporate Y2K command centers will be businesslike rather than jovial. Most companies have forbidden employees from bringing spouses or children to the office over that weekend. In dress and demeanor, employees are expected to behave as if New Year's Eve were just another workday.
Most companies will have Y2K teams working around the clock from Friday morning, Dec. 31, through Monday, Jan. 3, with shifts lasting eight to 12 hours. Anywhere from 10% to 25% of IT workers will be working that weekend, including Y2K programmers and experts on critical systems and business applications. Additional employees will spend the weekend on call, in case systems fail and extra help is needed.
"Everybody in our IT department is on call," says Joe Massani, director for IT at Boise Cascade Office Products in Itasca, Ill. Massani's department has 300 people, and 55 will be on duty New Year's Eve. The rest will work at various points over the weekend.
"We had three or four naysayers who were worried about the heat going off or the lights going out [at home]. They were concerned for their families and kids," Massani says. But the only employees he spared from working over the weekend were those who had trips planned before Y2K work shifts were announced more than a year ago.
Despite the hardship for employees who can't spend the historic weekend with their families, most companies are not offering extra pay except to a few hourly workers. Instead, most companies are granting comp days during December, while a few plan to award bonuses in January if the date change is successfully processed.
"We're a 24-7 operation," United's Baker says. "We're not really treating this weekend different than any other time."
Indeed, working late nights and over the weekend is standard practice for network managers, who regularly deal with work-related disruptions in their personal lives.
"Whenever we do a merger, everyone lives in the command center for a week and sleeps for a few hours a day," says Rich Alden, vice president and Y2K program manager at First Union Bank in Charlotte, N.C. "This is just part of the job."
While most Y2K command centers will be decorated with balloons, streamers and other New Year's Eve paraphernalia, employees are expected to buckle down and concentrate on the task at hand.
"There will be times over the weekend where the mood can be cheery, but come [Greenwich Mean Time] and at midnight local time, it's going to be serious," United's Baker says. "Everyone will be patiently watching their systems."
Y2K teams also will be monitoring news on the Internet and television throughout Friday, as the time change occurs first in New Zealand, then in Asia, Eastern Europe and finally in London.
"People are going to be on alert as it gets closer to the new year," says Bill Robertson, Y2K program director for the information systems division of the American Red Cross in Falls Church, Va. "There's going to be a fair amount of excitement . . . but it's not going to be a party atmosphere."
First Union Bank considered having a party in one of its main buildings and inviting the families of Y2K workers to join them for the midnight shift. But company officials nixed that idea as too risky.
"We were worried about the safety of the families. If they were here at midnight, then they would all have to drive home," Alden says. "We don't have enough cots for everyone. And we couldn't afford to cater for that big a crowd."
The one area in which companies are splurging is food. While plenty of pizzas and deli trays will be delivered to corporate office parks over the weekend, many companies are catering four-star meals for their Y2K teams. Susan Kurtz, a catering manager at Regency Caterers in Reston, Va., says Northern Virginia firms are opting for "classic elegant foods," including lobster tails, filet mignon, and oyster and shrimp bars.
"A lot of our clients think that if their employees have to work over New Year's, at least they should have food that is festive," Kurtz says. "Since they're not allowed to consume alcohol at work, we've come up with wonderful virgin cocktails and flavored coffee drinks."
Although the most extravagant food will be delivered for dinner on New Year's Eve, caterers will be working overtime to support high-tech workers all weekend long, Kurtz adds.
"We're going to have extraordinarily good food . . . and festive-looking decorations," says Cinda Hallman, senior vice president and Y2K project leader at DuPont, which will have IT staff working New Year's Eve at command centers in Singapore; Geneva; Mexico City; Sao Paolo; Mississauga, Ont.; and Wilmington, Del. "We're going to make it as comfortable as we can so our employees can concentrate on what they're doing."
Most companies are also buying gifts for employees who have to work over that weekend. Among the most popular items are gray and black fleece vests and pullovers embroidered with the company's logo and the number 2000.
"Around Oct. 1, all of a sudden people started buying stuff for the year 2000," says Pam McCord, a marketing representative with corporate gift provider Harper & Co. in Silver Spring, Md. "We had a glass champagne flute with 2000 going down the stem, and we can't get that anymore. There also was a glass coffee mug with 2000 etched in the bottom of it. The orders for that have been phenomenal."
Anticipating victory on New Year's Eve, some companies are already planning celebrations for later in January.
"We hope to have a party afterwards, but we don't want to put the cart before the horse," First Union's Alden says. Still, he adds, "we've got the party budgeted."
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