I don’t blog much about work. A lot of what’s bloggable at work is also confidential, and I also know that this blog is very easily found by students and faculty members, and I’d just rather not go there, you know?
But I don’t think anyone could blame me for complaining about working in the giant bureacracy that is a public, post-secondary institution of learning. How anything gets done is beyond me, since about 40 hands have to touch an event before it actually takes place. Often, somewhere along the way, as the ball is bounced from desk to desk, it gets dropped, misplaced, or just plain forgotten.
Today I tried to track down the status on a lodge reservation I made last year, only to find it had been misplaced and that the lodge is now closed that weekend for maintenance. Had I not gone to check on that, we may never have known we do not have a place for our end-of-year camping retreat. I wish I’d found out sooner, since it will now be impossible to find a campground that is available Memorial Day weekend. That’s kinda why I reserved it a year ago.
I then tried to reserve a facility for a concert, and the only day it was available was also Memorial Day weekend. Since the camping trip is a no-go, I put in a reservation for that, and was told I couldn’t, because the whole university shuts down for that weekend. I guess that explains why that space was available. Now I have an event I’d love to do, but have nowhere to put it.
A whole bunch of other unfortunate events happened today, but the end result was that I went in on my day off and accomplished absolutely nothing to realize my upcoming projects, except to grow even more discouraged than I was before I went in to “take care of business.”
Let this be a lesson to me. Never ever go in on your day off, self. Best to sit on the couch and do nothing than go to your windowless office to work yourself into a tizzy while accomplishing absolutely zilch.
I am trying really hard not to let this put me into a weekend-long bad mood. Tomorrow night, gay icon and sex columnist Dan Savage will be speaking at our campus, and I have to introduce him, so I suppose rather than whining about getting nothing done, I should write my introduction for said icon so that I don’t also make a fool of myself onstage tomorrow.
