Details, people... details....

Today I felt like everyone's bitch.

Today was "Big Block of Cheese" day -- it has a nicer name, but if you are a West Wing fan, you'll get the gist... if not, imagine a day of seminars intended to help students be better students and faculty having open office hours all day. Sounds pretty nice, right....

except if you are everyone's bitch.

In all honesty, today started nicely. My first student visitor came by with coffee and a muffin. I loved her before, but now I want her to move in with me and hubby.... we had a great conversation about live and love. Her hubby has recently returned from 15 months in Iraq, so she has a lot on her plate.

I then went up to sit at a table for a committee.... and that was actually pretty fun as well. I discussed the program and lots of other topics with a few good students.... after a bit, the chair of that committee asked me to take on one of his responsibilities for that evening. Bells should have warned me, I should have taken my own advise and said no ---- but, he told me a good story about a schedule conflict and a concert and I said yes.

As I was chatting with my 11:00 student, my Dean called.

and the day went downhill.... quickly.

It seems that the chair of a big, important and complicated committee (BICC) can't read a calendar -- or 4 f-ing e-mails, sent at different times in this process. Since August I've been dealing with, and passing on information about a project concerning my division and BICC. It seems that most of the schedule information given to me by the chair of BICC was wrong.

I caught the first mistake when I went to put it on my calendar. BICC traditionally meets on Wednesdays. According to the memo from last spring, BICC chair gave meeting dates that were on Thursdays. When I asked, I was told that the weeks were correct and the days should be Wednesdays, not Thursdays. These were the dates I told my people.

In subsequent e-mails and conversations I asked what was supposed to happen on those dates, when we were to meet on those dates, where we were to meet on those dates and what we should bring on those dates. Every time I asked about 10/10 and 10/24.

Today I find out the actual dates are 10/10 and 10/17!

I wanted to hit someone. The fact that I asked him so many times about various parts of this process and every time he looked at an incorrect date and didn't question it, really made me mad. Of course, I had to go around and get people to come to BICC's second meeting a week earlier than we'd thought. Thank goodness that my faculty are generally sweet and flexible people.

What made me even more mad was that someone in our department also KNEW and didn't bother to tell me I ought to question the dates in my e-mails. He told his discipline but didn't bother to let me know I should tell everyone else.

So, I've made some decisions as of today.

First, I won't deal with BICC chair anymore after this icky project is over. Obviously, I can't trust him to pay attention to his job and I don't want anything to do with him or BICC. For a committee that picks the smallest nits on the forms they deal with, the fact that their chair messes up dates four times AND their previous oversight about the scope of the project -- lead me to believe that I don't want anything to do with them.

edited -- because I really don't think that -- I was just having a general temper tantrum.

.