Hi 
I think probably the best way to handle it is to arrange a meeting with
your boss. Make sure it's a proper meeting rather than just trying to
catch him/her "on the fly" while he/she is busy dealing with other stuff.
Apologise profusely for having tried to save the company x amount of
money!
That you did so by trying to avoid the needed upgrade to MS Office
2013/365. Explain that you have put tons of your own time into saving the
company money in this way. Let him/her know that the office workers are
now demanding that the company buy in MS Office 2013/365 at a cost of x.
Let him/her know that MS products typically run into many problems when
they are first released but that most of those have probably been fixed by
now. Let him/her know that by delaying the cost you have ensured that the
company should run into far fewer problems with their purchase than they
would have done if they had just spent the money back when MS Office
2013/365 was initially released.
Maybe point out that there still will be problems because each version of
MS Office has problems reading some files from any previous versions and
that will continue to be a problem as each new version of MS Office needs
to be bought. Maybe follow-up by saying that converting documents to
LibreOffice only suffers that problem the one time and that future versions
of LibreOffice are built to ensure that old files can be read
Maybe say that the whole exercise to save the company x amount seems to
have created tensions with colleagues and been disheartening and taken up a
lot of your own time and that for those reasons you would rather not be
involved with installing MS Office 2013/365.
Basically wash your hands of it and point out that your motives were good
but that it was tooo much of an uphill fight that you are not happy to
continue with. It would help to know the licensing cost, x. For 2013 i've
heard around $500/machine for the version with Access in it or for 365 it's
probably a monthly figure. Companies can often get a discount and get a
"volume" license.
DON'T offer to share your research on this! Just make it sound like you
have heard a rumour that it costs roughly x. Picking the right version of
MS Office is notoriously difficult and likely to run into problems.
Whichever version you (or anyone else) choose is likely to be the wrong one
and incurr extra, hidden costs = if it's you that did the choosing or
recommending then they might think it was you deliberately sabotaging the
project so make sure it's someone else that is highly visibly to blame.
Similarly with installing it. it's likely to be a lot more of a struggle
than they probably realise and is likely to over-run both in time taken and
costs. So, again make sure you are visibly distanced from it. Try not to
help in any way to avoid getting the blame when they make mistakes! If
they need information then deliver it to your boss for your boss to hand on
to whoever is doing the installs.
Hopefully they'll need to get some external consultants in to do it, and as
is typical in the Window world those consultants will be tooo arrogant to
ask for any information or help.
Maybe at the end of the exercise arrange another meeting with your boss to
talk about talking back routine administration of the MS Office systems and
just express amazement at just how high the costs were, that you had been
trying to save the company from!
It might be worth asking a lawyer's advice about refusing to do certain
parts of what might be in your employment contract = there might be
justifiable excuses. Perhaps time to take a holiday?
Sorry this is not particularly useful! I know you have worked hard at this
and now find yourself in an untenable situation so i hope you are able to
work out a way of freeeing yourself and maybe gain a lot of respect from
your boss and maybe from the other workers too.
Regards from
Tom
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