“The test of good manners is to be patient with bad ones.”
– Gabirol
However. Setting up a massive loudspeaker system and then switching it on at 4:30 in the morning, waking me up to screaming rock music, might do the bloody trick.
Whoever you are, I hope dreadful, unspeakable things happen to you.
“Fellows who know all about that sort of thing – dectives and so on – will tell you that the most difficult thing in the world is to get rid of the body…”
– P.G. Wodehouse
So, on Friday we had a majorly important visitor. One of international consequence, influence, and meddling. His security detail/entourage/People were on campus days in advance and had to be herded around the whole university. I had to put together information packets for them detailing our VIP’s time down to minute increments. It was a well-knit, flawless operation.
Until the grounds crew, digging around the Law School, unearthed a large plastic bag of large bones: partial leg bones, ribs, and coccyx.
Cue flashes of Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, Dexter, and Hannibal Lecter. As you can imagine, it was a thrilling, suspenseful hour or so until we got an Anthropologist to inspect them (Sidenote: I really think all police departments should be located on university campuses. Think of the treasure trove of experts at your fingertips!).
They turned out to belong to a deer. What a let down.
Nevertheless, the weekend was a welcome event after the excitement. Monday has come way too early.
“A problem of type 2094 has occurred…what the [ahem] is that?! What are the two thousand ninety three other problems I skipped to get to that one?!”
-Eddie Izzard
A spectacularly dull day at the office, livened only by the laundry run. At which time a bundle of clothing was handed over to us all clean and neatly pressed, but without a name attached because it’s owner had forgotten to put the order sheet with his instructions in the bag with his clothes. Fear not, citizens, Lt. South’s name was discovered on the tag, much to my unholy glee.
Other than that, my Outlook account for work decided to blip out of existence yesterday. Thinking it was something to do with the new software our department is bringing online, I let it go, but today it was still out. I put in a request with IT, but when the techies did whatever it is they do and Outlook reappeared…it was without my emails, projects, calendars, contacts, or distribution lists. The only thing that makes me blissfully undisturbed by this is the fact that it’s twenty minutes to five and I don’t have to deal with it until monday.
“Do you just hate happy people today or something?”
“Yes.”
“Well, knock it off.”
“This? Coming from you?”
“Exactly. Consider the source. If I’m saying it, you may have crossed a threshold.”
-C. and Marie
A few lessons gleaned from this week, a few frustrations, and a few observations:
For all you would-be moguls out there, may I offer a humble tip towards being a good boss: Listen to your secretaries. They are the people who are responsible for keeping your megalomaniac ambitions logged, organized, and proceeding according to schedule. Lt. Citrus and Lt. Figaro both laid a project each on me this week without warning, which while it more than quadrupled my workload wasn’t too bad. The instructions, on the other hand, were maddening.
Quoth Lt. Figaro, “So, I’d like you to update this directory of every employee in the department. We haven’t done it in three years or so and it’s entirely obsolete. Theeson was the last person to update it” [Theeson was replaced by Tink who was replaced by Wise who was replaced by me, just for a time frame reference] ” but no one else ever really used it except me, and since she quit I’ve done without it, but I’ve decided I’d like a new copy.”
I tried to tell him that 1) we were hiring and firing half a dozen people within the week so the list would be obsolete by Friday anyway and 2) that I kept an up-to-date roster on the department server already complete with names, call numbers, and personal and professional contact information. “Well, just make it for me then if no one else will use it,” he smiled and went back to his office. I tried not to cry and mentally cut back my lunch hour.
Lt. Citrus’ project was validly important to the university, but the instructions he gave me to do it all came in the wrong order, with outdated software, and logically confusing interjections of last minute ideas, corrections, or modifications. And since it involved the creating, labeling, stuffing, packaging and mailing of literally 100 packets, by the end of the second day I had papercut my fingertips to shreds.
It’s been a long, hard week and I’m intensely glad it’s Friday. And I want Tink back desperately, work without a good friend to grumble about assignments to is drudgery.
Small Dog Syndrome 