I like arriving in the office in the morning, opening my email, and finding some nitwit shouting at me because I haven't "fixed" something I told him was out of my control.
Yeah. I like that.
Next to that, I like opening the next email on the page and finding that someone else who doesn't understand the problem has promised that I'll "fix" it today.
Yeah, I really like that.
That was how last Friday started. Fortunately it got better after that, but I seem to be having a little trouble getting over it.
Today started off with me pouring soup on the kitchen floor when I tried to pack my lunch. I had to stop and mop up, which made me 20 minutes late to work.
I'd feel guiltier about that if it wasn't for the fact that I wasn't the last one in, not by a long ways. This place is pretty casual about that sort of thing. Whoever is covering the reception phones is supposed to be in by 8 or before but the rest of us straggle in as the mood takes us. Since I don't consider punctuality a particularly interesting or worthwhile 'virtue' I like to work places where there's a lot of -ish to that 8 am start time. I'm reasonably capable of arriving at the office around 8-ish.
This irritates the heck out of the R.C. She feels that if the official start time to a work day is 8:00, then you should be at your desk, computer booted up and bright smile pasted on your face by at least 7:55. Me, I say that if you look back two weeks ago on Tuesday and you can't remember who came in "on time" and who was either five minutes late or five minutes early? Then it's not really important, is it?
Today we also had a little fire drill here at the office. Not exactly a drill, since the alarm sounding was neither planned nor expected by any of us, but nevertheless it went off and we trooped cheerfully outside to soak in some sunshine. Ten or fifteen minutes later we were still enjoying the sunshine because the firemen hadn't arrived.
Someone called the building management company (I don't know why they didn't call the firemen, so don't ask) who apparently contacted the fire department to tell them there might and/or might not be an actual fire and that we'd all appreciate it if they could fit us into their apparently busy schedules.
Obviously, since I have the time to blog about soup on the floor, there was no fire. I don't know what triggered the alarm. They didn't show up because no one invited them to the party.Turns out that some essential connection between our alarm system and the fire house wasn't working and the firemen didn't know we'd been alarmed.
To do them credit, once they got here, they cleared the building for us all to get back to work in about five minutes, but still. Most of them weren't even very cute, which has to be against some kind of fireman regulation, don't you think?
Bernie called yesterday and I promised to take a look at a potential campaign for a potential new client. He gave me a chance to bail out--to say I didn't have time. I didn't take it. Temporary insanity or something, I don't know.
Anyhow. With luck, he won't close the deal--this one is in a completely different industry than the last one and these stand-alone campaigns are a lot harder to make successful than my other ones are.
Well, it sounds like somebody needs to find out if the fire system is hooked to anything besides the inside alarms. Like whatever notifies the fire department (and you're absolutely right, cute firemen are in the rules, and somebody failed if you didn't get cute firemen).
So, who gets to "fix" the thing you don't have control over? *g*
posted by: Dail on 02.03.10 at 09:29 AM [permalink]The apartment we lived in back in Cambridge had a very old fire detection system that was apparently dust-clogged: we had a couple of false alarms in the time we lived there. But the fire department showed up pretty promptly -- which irritated them, when they realized that it was dust, not flames....
My next entertaining meeting is going to be a student who "wants to talk about last semester's grade". Speaking of things I can't fix....
posted by: Jonathan Dresner on 02.03.10 at 04:31 PM [permalink]One assumes that now the firemen and the building management know there's a communication problem, it will get fixed.
SEP If the firemen aren't going to be cute, I don't feel any need to be involved.
Jonathan? If the student annoys you, remember you're free to tell them that a grade can always be adjusted downwards to compensate for aggravation and wear-and-tear!
posted by: Anne on 02.04.10 at 10:29 AM [permalink]The R.C. feels that if they're paying you actual money, the least you can do is show up on time.
posted by: R,C, on 02.06.10 at 10:50 AM [permalink]That's a pretty common gambit -- "if you want me to reevaluate the grade, I will, but that means that I might well decide that I was too generous the first time" -- but I don't usually use it. Since I don't have any grade reconsideration policy in my syllabus, most of them just don't even try, especially since I will often announce the distribution, so that they can see where they fell in relation to the rest of the class. If they just don't get my grading, I will try and walk them through it a bit, mostly by focusing on what my comments say they did wrong and could do better next time. It's a bit judo-like: I try to shift their focus from the past paper to the next one. On occassion I'll look at something I graded and just be unclear on why I did something; I have regraded papers where I thought I missed something.
In this case, the kid ignored major components of the final paper ("pasting together paragraphs is not the same thing as writing an essay") and final exam essay assignments (borderline plagiarism, grossly inadequate answers), and got what he deserved. If he really has a problem with the C he got after reading those over, then it's going to get ugly.
posted by: Jonathan Dresner on 02.06.10 at 01:13 PM [permalink]I understand the R.C.'s position but my boss feels that they are paying me for what I know and what I do, not for pointless punctuality.
posted by: Anne on 02.08.10 at 11:25 AM [permalink]Don't say things like that, Jonathan! :-0 I don't want to respect you less because you would give someone a C for not actually covering the material and borderline plagarism. That's at best a D.
Although, I have a teeny bit of sympathy for the "just paragraphs pasted together, not an essay" thing. You've been reading my writing for long enough to know what a coherent, single-topic essay is completely beyond me. ;-)
posted by: Anne on 02.08.10 at 11:28 AM [permalink]No! The C was for the whole semester, including better-than-average tests. Also a C for the pasted-paragraphs; the final essays got considerably less than that, though.
Actually, your rants are, on average, at least as evidence-based and thematically unified as what I get on a good day. Seriously, if my students wrote like you (after I'd had them), I'd be getting teaching awards.
posted by: Jonathan Dresner on 02.08.10 at 08:13 PM [permalink]Well, that sounds better. :) I didn't think that sounded like you--giving an "average" grade for that kind of work. But the whole semester, that's different.
I loved writing papers in college. I always scanned the syllabus for classes I was interested in. If the class required half a dozen papers, I signed up for it! (The profs and grad students hated me, though. I was rarely able to confine myself to the mandated two or three pages.)
posted by: Anne on 02.09.10 at 08:22 AM [permalink]What you do is irrelevant if they can't count on you to show up on time to DO it, is my opinion.
Although I have suffered my whole life from Anybody-itis (which is where a co-worker walks in, looks around, and says, why isn't anybody here yet? and I have to point out that I am INDEED here, therefore there IS an anybody present, in which case they always say, "anybody ELSE, I mean," which isn't really very good for one's ego, first thing in the morning).
posted by: RC on 02.10.10 at 08:19 PM [permalink]But my POINT is that no one cares if I do it from 8-5 or from 8:10-5:10 or even from 9-6. "On time" is not a virtue any of my employers have particularly valued in the last ten or fifteen years. Possibly because many of them were also fond of strolling in whenever it suited them.
I hate Anybody-itis. I've gotten that several times myself. It's very rude.
posted by: Anne on 02.12.10 at 08:35 AM [permalink]