Monday, June 2, 2008

Head? Meet Wall. Repeat.

Gawd what a bizarre day.

At 11 am, my general manager announces to me that he has hired a coordinator to help me and Husbandly One plan the catering in August for 70,000 people. He explained at great length that he wasn't saying I can't handle the task, he knows I can, he just wanted to get me help, etc. And while he is telling me this, I am thinking at the back of my head, "Dude, be it 100 or 6,000 or 70,000 , it's all pretty much the same to me. It's Husbandly One who is going to be in the shitter, seeing how he has to actually pull off everything I organize."

But anyway, he keeps saying how he doesn't want me to read anything negative into this, he has total faith in me, but he feels I am going to need the help....oh, and by the way, she starts tomorrow and I don't even know where to put her, we have no free office space.

Tomorrow. WTF?

In my mind, I quickly ran through possible locations for this young lady to work from. "Sir, I have the biggest office in the sales department. I will get rid of some furniture, and rearrange what's left, and she can share my office." And I wasn't trying to be the big hero, mind you, I was trying to be practical and self sacrificing and do something for The Team.

I spent over an hour in my bare feet (because my stiletto sandals were NOT helping the situation) dragging heavy furniture around my office, in an attempt to make room for a second body. The resulting set up for me is NOT perfect (in fact, I hate it) but I figure it's only for two months and I have to be a team player.

I arranged to get her set up on our network with an email address and appropriate system access. I found a desk to be delivered to my office. I borrowed another office chair. I arranged to have my office re-wired for an additional phone line and a second computer terminal. I managed to find her a bloody computer. I even had a second key for my office made for her. I cleaned out an entire drawer of my filing cabinet for her, and organized all of my past concert files in a way that will make it easy for her to benefit from our past concerts. I even put out word to other departments that I needed an extra recycling bin and garbage can. In short, I worked my ass off today, to try and make her first day tomorrow as smooth as possible...even though my day today was full to the max long before I even knew this woman existed.

At 4:30, Husbandly One gets out of his all day meeting and for the first time, he learns of this coordinator, coming tomorrow. He says, "Well, 75% of the work she is going to do will be for me, so she should work out of my office."

I said, "Yes, of course she's working for you, but I have waaaaay more space than you do and I was essentially given ten minutes to figure out where she would work, and I couldn't talk to you, so I volunteered half of my office and all of my privacy to help out."

He, NOT getting the point, said, "No no, I want her in my office. It won't be a problem."

Nooo.....I guess it won't. Seeing how I did all the scrambling today and arranged everything. And neglected my other commitments to make this happen. And now have new holes in my office walls for no reason. And am now left with an office set up that I may hate, but spent an hour and many good intentions putting together. And now I have to put it all back the old way tomorrow. Assuming, of course, that the Old Way will cover the holes in the wall.

And as an added bonus, thanks for further removing me from the arrangements, from the planning process. At least if she was in my office, I'd be up to date with what was happening. Guess I am just an order taker, after all.

2 comments:

Froggy said...

A the hell! A coordinator! That is crazy.... I am so confused...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.