Heart breaking sadness, and panic-induced blankness

I admit I've been guilty of silently snickering at those who woe about losing their files, or those who have said "I can't believe I didn't back those files up!" to which I would think to myself "Pfft. Everyone knows you back-up your writing. Duh."

Well, it's my turn to stare blankly, heart thumping painfully with the knowledge that now the shoe is on the other foot... or is it 'insert foot in mouth'?

Every single scrap of writing I've done, all of my rants, my character obsessions, and original drafts, every revision I've ever done- gone. Of course I have my blog, and my home computer with other variations of the stuff, but the Original-originals were here, on my work computer. And now they aren't.

Thursday I had not come to work as I was in class all day. So it was left up to my trainee to turn in our weekly updates to our civilian boss, Joe. I get in to work this morning and Joe instantly climbs on my back about the update not being sent and "you know how important that update is, Marranda, I can't believe it wasn't done yesterday." he says. Well, funny, because I wasn't here yesterday, and how would I know it wouldn't get done? Where was my trainee? Where was my supervisor, who also knows how to create the update? Why am I being blamed for this? So I log onto a different computer than I normally use (my regular computer was occupied at the time), and began generating the updates for Joe. Half-way through the updating, my regular computer becomes available, so I log-off and go to my desk and try logging onto my regular computer. No joy. I get a prompt telling me my login profile cannot be located and a temporary profile will be loaded in its place. Whhhaaaat???
I call the service help desk, trying to keep my panic down. Not only am I worried about my file with all my story stuff in it, I'm worried about all my work, everything I use on a regular basis to help those in need of submitting a trouble call, everything that allows me to give immediate and correct information. I'm thinking I'm royally screwed.
Well, my login profile is found corrupt, and the technician on the phone manages to re-load it, but without my excel or word files. "Sorry ma'am, they just aren't retrieveable." Again; Whhhhaaaaat????? And then the panic sets in. I thank the sky I had the forethought to email myself my own 'final' drafts I completed on Tuesday. But what about all my other documents containing everything I've written from day one? Sure I have my character notebooks, where most of them have the first 400-500 words hand written, but all the progress documents? Half of them are gone.

So no, not all my work has been erased, and I find myself very lucky for that. But it was a large hunk of my work that has gone MIA, and I'm so upset about it. Why, oh WHY didn't I use that jump drive??