2004-06-30 - 11:02 p.m.

no moe

I had a great weekend. More about that later. Right now it's workplace bitch/vent time.

I know I've mentioned before what a huge and corporate place it is where I work. Example - when I needed to meet with five other people to schedule the next phase of the big project I'm helping with, the procedure is: go into Outlook (about which I will keep my opinions to myself) and set up a meeting invitation. But don't send it yet, just put the attendees on your list. Because you have to find out when everyone is available according to their Outlook schedule, and then call reception to schedule a conference room for that time, so you can put the name of the conference room on the official meeting request.

So last week I did that. Got a date and time that looked good for everyone, called reception and told her when I needed a conference room, for how long and for how many people. She booked room #3 for me (there are a couple dozen conference rooms in the building).

The meeting was set for 1:00 today. At 12:55 I got up from my desk to go to the conference room, and was met by one of my meeting attendees (who happens to be in upper-ish management) who said to me with this grin on his face, "Where are we meeting?"

"Room three," I said, or attempted to - about the time I got through the consonants and was about to start on the vowel sound, he interrupted me with, "Nope, there's someone in there." So I said, "Well, I booked the room. Maybe they're running late" and again he interrupted, "Nope, they just got there. They're doing a demo for a client. They kicked me out. So where are we meeting?"

Okay, obviously you know stuff I don't because you've been to the room already and I haven't. I made a plan. Something happened to it. The attitude just pissed me off. He could have said, "There's someone in room #3, where can we go instead?" But no - ask me a question that shows that you know something I don't, so you can have the fun of blindsiding me and implying I screwed up. Oh excuse me - "dropped the ball." What's the fun of persecuting someone without a sports analogy? As if this kind of room overbooking doesn't happen all the time?

So I called and got another room. No permanent damage.

The point of this meeting was to discuss scheduling. There are three departments that have to work together on this project: mine, and two others led by people we'll call Larry and Curly. The people involved in the meeting are me, my boss, my boss's boss, Curly, Curly's boss, Larry, and Mr. Manager from before, who is Larry's boss, and is also Curly's boss's boss. Got all that? Okay.

The last time we all met, a couple of weeks ago, we were thinking the next phase would happen in August. But because of this, that, the price of eggs in Tulsa and the transit of Venus, my part of the project is ahead of schedule. I would like to point out that I had *told* Curly and Larry before hand that my area would now be ready by July. At the meeting we find out that Curly's area is also ahead of schedule (this is news - I'm apparently the only one who shares information before its time). So now Larry is suddenly under fire. "So can you be ready for July?" He stops to think for a moment and is met with laughter. "Ha ha, Larry's speechless! What's the matter, Larry? You're holding us up! You're an obstacle to our success!"

Those are direct quotes (except for the "Larry" part). Said while laughing but they weren't jokes. I expected someone any minute to say what's the matter, can't get it up?

So he says why does it have to be July - he's told I'm a temp and my contract is running out. Ah. Fuel for Larry. He tells my boss's boss, well, extend the contract then, are you afraid to spend a little money? A ha, so now it's her fault, she's rushing because she's cheap. Meanwhile Curly is sitting over to the side happy that for once she's neither the target nor the shooter in the battle. She's not the one pushing for July but July isn't a problem for her. So she's laughing at the appropriate cues and adding to the flame of whoever is currently getting burnt, trying to keep it from being her turn next.

The "gotcha" and "double dog dare" and "my old man can beat up your old man" school of business. Gotta love it.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -