Meeting Requests Suck!

Originally posted Monday, October 24, 2005

I hate meeting requests through email. They just seem so rude, especially when there is no option to decline it. This, in my opinion, defeats the phrase “Request”, but what the hell do I know.

-Meeting request from Director-

Staff meeting in my office on Wednesday at 2:00pm. It will be short but attendance is mandatory.

I reluctantly click the accept button, two seconds later three other teachers are hovering like bees over my desk asking what my thoughts were on the meeting.

“How the hell should I know?” I ask

“Well we just assumed since you guys have stayed after a few times drinking beer that maybe he let you in on some info or something.”

“Hey, I use that drinking time as blackmail, not to get info on stupid meeting requests”

They look upon me quizzically as if they don’t believe me.
“Look” I say “I don’t know what the damn meeting is about and I don’t care. Besides I doubt I will be at the meeting anyway.”

“Why do you say that” one of them chirps

“I dunno, but I will figure out something” With that said they scurry away mumbling amongst themselves.

My phone rings, I look at the display and see it is my blind student. With a pleasant voice I pick up the receiver “can I help you?” Normally I wouldn’t answer the phone with such care, but you have to be considerate to the disabled, or so the state has sent me a letter saying so. I ask how his day is going, how the kids are, does his Seeing Eye dog do any tricks and so on. This being nice thing is driving me nuts. Each pleasantry that spews out of my mouth feels like the stomach acid on the back of your throat after vomiting.

“And you thought it was raining because you were standing under a sprinkler the whole time…..HA, HA, HA, HA, no wonder everyone was staring at you…….oh man that was funny…..” That’s it, I’m going to puke “so, what can I do for you today?” I ask

“Well I was wondering if I can change the test date.” He asks

This happens to be a unique situation. Since he is blind, taking a test becomes…..err…..a challenge to say the least. Basically I have to sit in on the test with him to read the questions aloud and help him with colors and anything else he can’t determine on his own. This means I need to schedule at least two hours of my day with him to accomplish this task. See, legally he is blind, however he can make out blurs of objects that are placed directly in front of his eyes, and by directly I mean they need to be touching his pupils, that is unless he puts on his glasses, which have been specially modified for his vision. They consist of a very strong frame with extremely convex 3 inch thick lenses. No, I’m not over-exaggerating, they are three inches think. With the help of these, and him bringing in his 22” LCD monitor and me dictating the entire exam, he shouldn’t have a problem, well unless the state finds out a teacher is sitting in with a student to take a final exam, but he looks like a gambler and the odds are in his favor so what the hell.

“Ok no problem” I say “when would you like to schedule it?”

“Well” he says “what works best for you?”

“How about Wednesday, say...... 2:00pm?”

“That sounds perfect” he says “that will give me enough time to take the test and still catch the bus.”

“Cool, consider it done then”

I hang up the phone and walk up to the front desk where our newly hired secretary is on her second pot of coffee trying to keep up with the overwhelming amount of work she has been assigned in the last week to catch up from the last secretary who quit.
“I need to schedule an exam for a student”

-TAP-, -TAP-, -TAP-

“Ok, when would you like to schedule it?” she asks

“Wednesday at 2:00pm, and I will need at least a half hour in advance before and after the test to set this one up. Also I will need the testing room reserved exclusively for me and the student so I can administer the test with the lights off”

“?”

“Don’t ask” I tell her

I watch her eyes as she brings up the calendar for Wednesday.

“Ok…….that shouldn’t be a…….. Oh wait, I don’t think that will work.” She says

“Why not.” I inquire

“Well that’s the day and time that the director has scheduled the staff meeting”

“Oh is it really” I say in astonishment (yeah like I didn’t know that). “Hmmmmm……well you know what the director says, the student always comes first”

“He does?”

“Of-course, it should have been the first thing he told you when you started here, what is wrong with you?”

She begins to stutter “I….I….well he might have, I just…….I mean I have been so busy….and…..”

“Never mind that, I’ll let it slide this time” I say “So, back to the scheduling please!”

“Yes, done, and done”

“Thank you” I turn and walk back to my desk.

It’s not long before the director comes scurrying out to my desk in a panic.
“So” he says hands pitched on his hips as he so likes to do when he is trying to look important “I see you made it a point to get out of my mandatory staff meeting.”
“What........me?” I say pointing at myself as the innocent bystander.

“Yes, and I see it is to give your blind student a test so there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.”

“Oh, well my apologies, I mean I thought you said that the students ALWAYS come first.”

“Well…..yeah I did but…”

“Well then I think it only appropriate to stand by your word, especially in this case involving someone who is” I lower my voice to a whisper “handicapped”

“Well fine, you don’t have to stay for the whole thing, but you are going to sit in on the first five minutes, besides, I think you will want to, you’ll probably be the only one happy with the news.”

‘Ok” I say “but if I get any more complaints from the state about treating special people differently, I’m forwarding them onto you.”

He leaves the room and heads back to his office.

2:00PM

My student arrives, cane in hand and I guide him to a chair.

“It will be just a few minutes.” I say “I have some sort of meeting to attend to for about 5 minutes, and then we can get you going on your test.”

“No problem, I will just wait here then.” He tells me

“Good….oh and here is a magazine to keep you occupied while I am gone.” I toss the magazine on his lap and start heading down the hall before realizing I just passed a blind person a magazine that can’t see or read it. Note to self: expect another letter from state about proper etiquette around blind people.

I walk into the office where a small assembly of teachers, admissions people and other staff members has gathered. The director is still in his office with the door closed. An obvious attempt to build up the tension while everyone murmurs about what this could be about. Inside his office I can hear two voices. One is definitely the directors but I can’t seem…..to…..make…..oh…..wait that sounds an awful lot like our new legal teacher we hired for business law. Why would he be having a private meeting with someone who has over 30 years being a lawyer and working in the judicial system? Before I can even answer that the door swings open and out come both of them. The director stands for a moment with a large smile before moving towards the door and ushering anyone within 5 feet away from him and the door. He begins rubbing his hands together in a nervous fashion and teetering back and forth from his toes to the balls of his heals.

“Well I bet you’re all wondering why I called you in here today.” He says

Throughout the crowd you can hear slight “Yeah”, or “no kidding, I have work to do you know”, and “fat ass”, “jerk”……..oh wait those last ones were from me.

“Well don’t worry, this will be very brief.” With that he reaches behind his back and places one hand on the door handle before shouting “I QUIT!!!!!!” With his free hand he flips us all the bird making sure to turn it at everyone as if reading a storybook and showing us all the pictures. He then turns, opens the door and proceeds to walk out of the school, all while still shouting such phrases as “FUCKERS HAHAHAHA”, “EAT MY SHIT ASSHOLES”.

I look around the room, everyone still awe struck, mouths gaping open, the admissions people like little wind up robots stuck up against a wall are lost and don’t know what to do without someone to baby-sit them now.

I begin to laugh hysterically out loud.

“What the hell is so funny?” one of the staff members asks me

Wiping the tears coming out of my eyes from laughing so hard I look up at him and say “because, he told me I would be the only one who would enjoy his announcement and he was right.”

“I don’t think that is very funny, now we have know one to run the school, and who knows how long corporate will take to get someone in here, not to mention one of them will probably be up here to keep things on track which means we have to be on our best behavior, and…….”

“Oh shut up” I tell him “stop you’re damn whining, he wasn’t running the school anyway, besides, we’re free now; I think I will enjoy it. Now if you all don’t mind, I have to go administer a test to a blind student.”

I walk out the door, still laughing quietly to myself, listening to the roars of conversations now coming from the office. “That should keep everyone busy and out of my hair for the rest of the day” I think to myself.

“What’s all the commotion about?” my blind student asks

“Oh, nothing much” I say “but things are about to get real interesting around here.”

Very, very interesting indeed………………

I Had To Ask

Originally posted Wednesday, October 19, 2005


I head into work the next day with a huge hang over. I open the door, my head hung low as to not draw attention to myself, dark shades over me eyes.

“Good morning” the secretary announces to me

“Morning” I say, in a low tone, my voice sounding like a Mack truck using its “Jake Brakes”

I waddle off to my desk for some piece and quiet, the center, seeming unusually quiet today……..a little too quiet.

-BEEP-

“Silence”

I wonder who that could be.

-BEEP-

“More silence”

“Yes” I say into blank air

“I need to talk to you, come see me in my office” The director says over my loud speaker
“I’ll be there in a few”

-CLICK- the sounds of him hanging up are heard through my speaker, but just to make sure…..”Fat ass……..” nope nothing, guess he really did hang up.

After getting a cup of coffee, taking a few aspirin (10 or 12) I head into his office.

“Ah, close the door behind you and take a seat” he says to me

I oblige and sit down holding my cup of coffee with both hands like a bum on the street, watching as the steaming liquid inside sways from one side to the other, almost cascading over the lip before coming back down. Back and forth, it continues to sway…..back….and forth……I begin to feel nauseas. Odd, that usually doesn’t happen until after meeting with the director.

“So what’s up?” I ask

“Well, I heard about the little 'to-do' yesterday.”

“Whatever are you talking about I ask” as if I have no idea

“Don’t think I don’t have ears, I know all about it”

“Funny, I could have sworn YOU WERE OUT TO LUNCH” I say shouting and looking at the closed door. I watch the base of the door as light and shadows dance across the floor, and the sound of footsteps can be heard scurrying away. (I have officially moved the admissions people to my hate list)

“Ah ha, thought you could get away with it did you. Nothing escapes me around here.” He says with assertiveness “I always know what is going on”

“Oh really” I say “then you already know what all happened and this meeting is pointless”

“Well……yes……but I want to get your side of the story” He says

“Yeah, ok….” I figure whatever; I can amuse him for a little while, besides this distraction is taking away from my throbbing hang over inside of my head.

“I just want to know what brought it on” he says

“Well, for starters, your lead mentor is an idiot.”

“Yes” he says shaking his head in a nodding form. I give him a quizzical look.

“So you agree?”

“Never doubted it” Again, I am puzzled

“And yet he is lead teacher?”

“Look” he says holding his hands out in front of him as if praying “I made him lead teacher because at the time there was no one else here, besides, the title is just a formality. He makes the schedule and reports to me what is going on throughout the network and what not.”

“Ok, but he said he was my boss” With this he lets out a huge laugh

“Far from it! As a matter of fact he should be taking orders and direction from you. He and I will be having a little talk as well and I will make sure he understands this.”

“Ah….ok” I turn and look around the room for any hidden cameras…..nope none that I can see. I pinch myself……..yep seems real. I look around again to be sure I am in the right place…….seems to be. Hmmmmm…..I think my director was abducted by aliens last night and replaced with someone else. This is just not like him.

“Let me ask you this” he sits back and looks up at the ceiling with his hands crossed behind his head “What is your first priority here?”

“The students” I say

He sits up straight in his chair, looks directly at me with a big smile on his face and slams his fists down onto his desk “EXACTLY!!!! And don’t you forget it. Actually you’re the first one I brought in here who got that right” he says “Junior seems to think otherwise.”

“Yes I know, I got that impression yesterday……oh and his name is Sped” I tell him

“Sped?” He looks at me with his head cocked “well never mind, are we on the cool now?”

“Yeah of course, I never once strayed away from my job duties.”

“Good, that’s what I like to hear, well get out there and continue on.” The director then leans back in his chair crosses his hands behind his head again and looks aimlessly up at the ceiling. He almost looks human.

“Oh and one more thing………next time you feel like your going to punch out his lights, come and talk to me first…….I can afford to lose him, I can’t afford to lose you.”

I shrug my shoulders “Ok”

“Yes, Sped and I will be having a long talk about things……..a very long talk…..” I am not positive, but I swear I heard an evil laugh coming from his office as the door closed behind me. Very odd indeed, I can’t help but think something is up with him.
I head back to my desk actually feeling pretty good about this last meeting. Maybe things will change around here. Maybe I don’t have to worry about things breaking or the network crashing and being down for hours because someone made a change that they thought was a good idea. Maybe I can finally get some things done like my own studying while the other teachers take some of the work load. Just then the lead teacher walks up to me.

“Hey, server crashed, all data is lost.”

“WHAT”

“Yeah I was running a check disk, and it froze up, now it’s in a continuous reboot cycle.”

“Why would you do a check disk on the server if it was running fine? Wait nevermind that, why in the hell would you run a checkdisk during normal business hours on a main server?”

“I don’t know, just felt like it.”

It’s at this point I begin to realize that nothing has changed that once again only smoke has been blown up my ass. I will not get to study, things will not finally work around here, and things are definitely not going to change with sped.

“I tried to reboot the server, and then I ran some utilities, then I swapped out…………”

His voice begins to drift off as my mind helplessly drifts away to a happy place. I look down at my cup of coffee, still swirling, not so steamy, splashing from side to side of my cup……..back and forth…..back and forth………back…………

There coming to take me away, ha, ha, he, he, ho, ho……

The Following Week

Originally posted Thursday, October 13, 2005


After last weeks major fuck up from Sped, I walk into work on Tuesday with much skepticism as to whether or not anything has really changed. Sped cuts me off at the pass before I can even get to my desk.

“We need to have a talk” He says

“Yes we do” I say fearing we are not on the same boat judging by his tone and the look on his face.

“I sent you a meeting request in Outlook for 2:00pm today.”

“All right, fine”

I head over to my desk where I am greeted by the nurse.

“Good morning, and how are you.” She asks

“Ok, I guess, depends on this damn meeting later”

“Oh I bet it’s about this weekend” she says

“Why, what happened this weekend?”

“You didn’t hear?”

“No, obviously not, hence the question, what happened this weekend.”

“The computers were so screwed up that they had to shut the school down and send everyone home.”

“What do you mean they were screwed up, they working fine when I left on Friday” I say with concern

“I know that’s why they are blaming YOU!”

“WHAT?”

“Yeah, they said whatever you did messed up the computers so bad that they couldn’t do anything.”

“But I didn’t do anything; all I did was fixed Sped’s fuck-up.”

“Well I wasn’t here Friday so I don’t know what all went on, all I know is that they said it had to be something you did.”

I immediately head into the directors office to find out what’s going on.

-DOOR SLAMS-

“What’s this I hear I’m getting blamed for whatever happened this past Saturday?” I ask the director

“Yeah, seems the whole system was fucked up.” He tells me

“But I didn’t change anything” I explain

“Sure you did. Don’t you remember you whacked his public profile? The default profile didn’t have any of the network drives mapped or anything, so nothing worked.”

“Wait a minute” I say “I’m not the one that changed the profile, you did, and besides that I tested everything before I left and all the computers were working with no problems.”

“No….no, I don’t recall that, but anyway, what’s done is done, no big deal. Well I’m off to lunch see you later.”

“No big deal? Out to lunch? It’s only 9:30. Something is defiantly up with him” I think to myself

I walk back to my desk where coincidently the nurse turns to me and says.
“Don’t you find it odd the long lunch’s the director has been taking lately?”

“Yes….I wonder what’s up?”

“I dunno, but he seems to have a different excuse each day, first it was taking his wife to the hospital, then he had to help a friend move, then his car was struck by hail, and then……” The sounds of her voice trail off as I focus back on my computer to check log files on the server from this past Saturday to determine what happened. From the looks of it, the default profile does not look the same as it did on Friday. But how did it change? I was the last one out of here Friday night? Confused I ignore it for now and hope the meeting later can shed some light on the subject.

2:00pm

“Well, you ready?” The other teacher asks me

“Yeah I guess lets get this over with.” I say

We head off to a small meeting room where the director is to join us. That is if he still weren’t out to lunch.

“Well the director isn’t back from lunch yet so I guess it is just you and me.” He sits down at the table across from me and lays down a notebook with a page full of scribbled down suggestions, ideas and comments. “The director seems to think we need to communicate more on our daily activities if this school is going to run smoothly”

“Yes I would have to agree with that.” At this point I am expecting him to tell me that he made a terrible mistake last week in taking it upon himself to make so many sudden changes without notifying anyone or going through proper channels. I should know better then this.

“First off, you are not to make any changes to the system without notifying me first of what you plan to do.”

“Excuse me?” I say

“The changes you made on Friday were so bad they had to shut down the school, and I had to come in on Sunday to clean it up.” My blood pressure is beginning to rise, and a soar of emotions is quickly building inside of me to the point that I can’t contain myself in a proper manner anymore. At this point I have had it with this pile of puke and am going to let him know about it.

“Hold on here, for one thing I didn’t make any changes to the system on Friday, your director did.”

“Oh, it was? He didn’t tell me that part”

“Yeah taking blame around here is something no one seems to want to do and I am tired of it. Second, you told me you were coming in here on Friday to help fix all the shit you caused.” My voice is starting to elevate now to the point that the admissions office on the other side of the wall has fallen completely silent. “I did what I had to do in order to get the students on track, and I will do it again in the future with, or without your damn permission.”

‘No, you won’t” he asserts

“YES I WILL”

“No, you will contact me anyway you need to and discuss these changes.”

“The FUCK if I will. You were not here on Friday; you did not see the chaos you caused. You didn’t have to deal with angry students because they were not able to work on their material. I did what I had to do to get this place operational and that is my first priority and I will do it again, if you don’t like it then fuck off.”

‘Calm down…….”

“Fuck you, if you think I am going to sit back while this place falls apart, and everyone blames me for shit they did and on top of that try to get a hold of you on your cell phone and wait for your approval you got another thing coming.”

“Look” he says trying to calm me down “I know you probably don’t like the fact that I am your boss…..”

“MY BOSS, for one, your not my boss, two, if you were I wouldn’t give a shit…… if you knew what the hell you were doing, but you don’t. You suck in the IT field, you have no conception of what it is like out in the real world, you are fresh out of college and only book smart and think you know what it takes to successfully run anything IT. You’re a fucking moron, and in the real world you would have been fired 10 times over by now for the stunts you have pulled.”

“Yeah I know, but……..”

“But nothing, you openly admit this shit now and yet you continue to do it, and on top of that you want me to get approval from you? Yeah right, it’s not happening.”

“Look as I told you before, all decisions go through me from now on.”

“No, they don’t”

“Yes, they do”

“No, they won’t”

“Yes, they will”

“NO, THEY WON’T, I will continue to do my job as described to me, and that is, the students come first and they are my first priority. Whatever is needed to get that done, DO IT, plain and simple!” At this point I am yelling at the top of my lungs, and I stand up from the table looking down at him. “And in the future if the opportunity arises, I will not hesitate to do the same, and if you don’t like it then fire my god damn ass…BOSS, otherwise shut the fuck up.” I begin to open the door to leave this ridiculous meeting when he says…..

“Now come on, sit down.”

“Fuck you, this meeting is over!”

“SIT DOWN, NOW” Demanding me like his dog is not going to get him very far; I ignore him and proceed out the door. As I walk back to my desk I can hear him still in the meeting room mumbling something to himself about “great fucking meeting, glad I’m the only one here” followed by him leaving the room and slamming the door. On his way back he decides to swing by my desk. Now this is either an extreme act of bravery, or stupidity.

“I highly advise you to get the hell away from me” I tell him

“From now on everything goes through me.”

“What fucking ever dude” Ah stupidity rears its ugly head once again.

By now I am so furious I can’t concentrate on anything, and the urge to kick his ass is still very strong. About an hour goes by before he comes back out to my desk.
“Now is not a good time” I tell him “I am still extremely pissed off, and not far off from pounding the piss out of you.” He pulls up a chair and sits down.

“Ok listen, if we’re going to work together………”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me clearly the first time” Like a lion in the wild being approached while eating a fresh kill, I stop momentarily working on my computer, turn my chair to face him, look him straight in the eyes and in a low tone tell him “I said get the fuck away from me, NOW.” To my surprise he just sits there staring at me as if he didn’t hear a word I just said.

“We need to work this out, other students are noticing our behavior” At this point I could give a rats ass, but since I need the job I sit back to hear his ramblings. “I know I made some fuck up's last week…..”

“You know what, I don’t even fucking care, what pisses me off the most is that you said you were coming in the next day to help me out, and you never showed up."

“Well actually I did, but it was after hours.” HOLY FUCK, now I know why everything was so messed up on Saturday. It all makes sense now.

“Wait a minute; you came in here on Friday after hours? Why? Everything by then was working fine.”

“Well I had to…..you see…….I finished up……”

“You son of a bitch, what the hell did you do? Wait never mind that, how could you sit there and let me take the blame for something, once again you knew you did.” If I drop him three steps to the left of the giant air conditioner on the roof, he should hit the pavement right next to the overweight, chain smoking, and disfigured, handicapped women’s parking spot.

“Well, at the time I didn’t know what changes you had made on Friday.”

“I DIDN’T MAKE ANY CHANGES”

“Well, anyway, we need to work this out!” He says

“No, you need to go away whilst I calm down” Seeing my degree of anger he finally subsides and walks back to his desk.

Throughout the entire school all is still quiet, and for the first time I am actually able to get some things done. For some reason no one wants to ask me any questions or even sit any where near me. Must be giving off a vibe or something, oh well, no worries.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring?