The Time I Told Myself I Saved a Life in My Job as Basically a Guy Who Sends Emails

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio, Pexels

Welcome to another episode of Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells, where I share true and personal stories. You can listen to this on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer, iHeartRadio, JioSaavn, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Spreaker, or your favorite podcast platform by way of the RSS feed. You can also listen to or read it below, and if you do, I hope you enjoy!

This story is titled The Time I Told Myself I Saved a Life in My Job as Basically a Guy Who Sends Emails. It’s about one of those thrilling times in a desk job when I did something that may have really mattered.

Note: Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells is best when heard, not read, because of the emotion the art of oral storytelling evokes. If you can, I encourage you to listen to the audio. 

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

Nothing in my professional life had felt more urgent. 

The virus that causes Covid-19 had begun spreading in the U.S. People were terrified. Masks and other personal protective equipment were becoming hard to find. Leaders of organizations were scurrying to get their computer-based staff able to telework indefinitely.

In 2020, I was a computer worker in the U.S. federal government. I had essentially two duties. The first was managing my organization’s new employee orientation, also known as charming new employees into working super hard for us for a long time. The second duty was ensuring high-level documents and inquiries were reviewed and answered. Those “tasks,” as they were called, first came through an email inbox that I and three others managed. Then, whoever was on shift managing the tasksbox had to interpret the request or inquiry, decide which subject matter experts to share it with, how to share it, the deadline for response and other critical instructions, and the overall level of importance. We’d then provide the experts with everything they’d need to complete the task, eventually receive the response, and email the response back up the chain. Usually, at that point, we’d never hear about the tasks again.

The emails that came through the tasksbox were often vague, sometimes near gibberish. Some tasks were given deadlines far in advance, while others had to be completed within a couple hours. This combination of sometimes needing to complete something almost immediately, while initially having no clue what that something was, led me to feeling stress. When I was on shift managing the tasksbox, I wouldn’t dare avert my eyes from the screen for more than three minutes. Sometimes, I’d take the computer with me to the bathroom to ensure I wouldn’t miss something. What if a nonsensical task with a tight deadline came through? I’d need most of the minutes to understand what the task was before I could even get around to facilitating its review or response. I wondered if managing the tasksbox rewired my brain. Every notification, every ping, every bolded subject line increased my heart rate and blood pressure. I wondered if this job was unhealthy for me. And would completing any of these tasks ever matter? I’d likely never know.

On Friday, March 20, 2020, a week after March Madness was canceled and President Trump declared Covid-19 a national emergency, I was at home working. I was on shift managing the tasksbox. I saw the bold subject line of a new email enter the inbox. I tensed up. This one seemed to be of the highest level of importance. I muted the TV behind me to focus on this task. Its gist was basically this: much of the federal government, including my agency, had recently tried getting workers home indefinitely. Now, our headquarters demanded the data later that day. 

What was the total make-up of the workforce of the directorate where I worked in the agency’s office of the chief of staff? What was the make-up of the directorate’s individual offices, how many were settled already working from home, how many were anticipated to be working from home by the end of the week, and of those who were not yet home, why weren’t they? That was the level of data I was now responsible for providing to the people on the other side of the government email black hole.

There was no time to waste. I received this task at 11:30 a.m. and needed to provide the data in an easy-to-read manner by 5 p.m. But how?

I reread the task and wrote down the precise requirements as I understood them. Unlike my confusion after reading some other tasks, I felt confident about the data requested and who could provide it, but was I certain? I chatted with my teammates and our boss to make sure we all understood this task. That would be especially valuable when my shift on the tasksbox would end and someone else would need to take over. They agreed with my initial interpretation. Our boss added that I would exclusively work on this one task and my teammates would take over my shift for any other unrelated tasks. 

I got down to business. I listed my points of contact who could provide the pieces of data I’d need to create the final product. I drafted an email to them describing the task’s urgency and request as succinctly as I could. Here, my background transforming jargon into plain English helped me. I put the bottom line up front in the email draft. I bolded the deadline. I numbered the individual pieces of data I needed from each point of contact. I double checked to make sure it was clear. I triple checked. I had a colleague review the draft language. It all checked out.

Then, the hardest part: creating from scratch one spreadsheet to collect individual pieces of data and another spreadsheet to aggregate all those individual pieces. The first had to be clear enough that the experts could give it one glance and see what they were to provide. It needed built-in formulas so nobody would make an error calculating, and the spreadsheet needed grayed-out fields to keep the experts’ focus on the other fields that needed their attention. 

Did my agency’s headquarters want the percentage of teleworkers to the tenth or the hundredth percent? Those were the kind of questions I had to assume answers to because there wasn’t enough time to confirm. I guessed neither, so I set the percentage fields to show just the whole numbers.

When the spreadsheet was in final shape, I attached it to the email I’d drafted and clicked “send.” 

For now, there was little else to do. I had to assume my instructions were crisp, final, perfect, because there would likely be no time to send revised instructions. So, I waited for experts to return their data to me before consolidating it all.

As I waited, I felt anxious excitement. This was different from the stress I often felt in this duty. Rather, in this case I knew what I was doing. In fact, I felt I was the best person for the task. It also just seemed kind of big and real. Humanity was in a new battle with nature that was anticipated to kill many people—some researchers predicted upwards of 70 million people around the world would die from Covid-19. It was rewarding to realize that the years I’d spent building these skills led me now to play my tiny role in the national emergency.

An hour ticked away. Then another. I checked in with experts at times to see how they were coming along with the data. Another hour ticked away. It was mid afternoon and I hadn’t received any data. Finally, the first set of data came in. I reviewed it, it looked complete, and then I copied that into my second spreadsheet that would act as a final summary report. By late afternoon, all component data had been returned to me, and my compilation spreadsheet was ready to be sent back up the chain. Over 80% of my directorate’s workforce was already indefinitely at home with all the gear they’d need to continue their job functions, and many more workers were on their way there. I clicked “send” one final time. 

How would the data ultimately be used? I wasn’t sure. At the least, I figured the call for data alone was enough of a nudge for leaders to push harder to get even more workers home, if their job duties could be done remotely. Maybe I helped nudge one person to start teleworking one day sooner than he or she otherwise would have. Maybe I helped prevent one Covid-19 infection. Maybe I helped prevent one death. I’ll never know.

I leaned back in my office chair in my apartment in Arlington, Virginia, and logged off my computer for the day. There was nothing left to do. After all, I was just the guy who sends emails. 

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]