My to do list for work today:
Finish getting R—’s trip to Denver set up with the travel departmentGet the food set up for A—’s lunch presentation to the big-wigsFinish linking the cells in the Excel workbook with the source document- Work the math out to figure out the hours spent per department on this project last week
Follow up with several people regarding deadlines for projects due this weekFigure out how to ship that box back to the supplierGet a hold of S— in finance and get the right account charged for that eventGet the standardized template out to the guys for updates on their tasksAnd more…
My hand is doing much better. All the symptoms from yesterday are gone except for a little tenderness around the wrist joint and the burn actually hurt today — it didn’t yesterday and maybe that should have told me something… Anyway, it’s much better today.
Mom, please feel free to call whenever you’d like! I usually have people over one evening of the weekend, so you’d need to call before 6 on the weekend. Otherwise, call after 7 and I’m usually home by then. I can email you a more detailed example of my schedule if you’d like.
The biggest part of my day today was spent coordinating a lunch for the directors and VP over the project I’m working for. I set up the meeting last week. I ordered food for it yesterday. The meeting was scheduled from 11-12 and lunch would be provided. At 9:45 this morning, my boss told me he thought they were going to move the meeting up from 10 – 11 and did I already order the food? Oh. Well, he’d call me in 1/2 hour and tell me what to do.
Half an hour later, the meeting was back on schedule and I went to Zaxby’s to pick up the food. Three trips back to the car and a hefty charge on my corporate card and I was back in my car and on my way to the building with the meeting.
I am very thankful that I ran into someone there who helped me unload everything from my car and then the woman who was helping me get this organized told me where to set up the food. My boss was already in the meeting and didn’t know where the food was going to be set up because there was a last minute change about where that was happening, so I had to step into the meeting and motion to my boss to let him know where it was.
And then I waited to make sure that everything would go smoothly and that no one would steal the food and that people would know where to find the food. And I waited. And waited. And watched the food get cold. And waited. And listened at the door of the meeting to make sure they were still in there (2 doors to the room). And waited. And an hour later, they made it out of their meeting.
I’m running the math on how long I think all those things took and I’m off somewhere, so maybe it wasn’t an hour, but it was definitely long enough that the food got cold. And that was not the impression that I wanted to make on the VP and all the directors. Not that I had anything to do with how long their meeting took at all. But, like I told Justin when I called and ranted to him about this, it doesn’t matter one bit whether or not it was actually my fault. It matters if the directors and VP think it was my fault. If they think I could have done something to keep the food warm long enough, then that’s the impression that they’re going to have, accurate or not, and there’s nothing I can do about that. And it’s very frustrating.
Anyway, the important people got their food. And then I got my food. And then the rest of the people who were in the room where the food was set up got to eat anything they would like because it’s just rude to make them all smell Zaxby’s for a couple hours and not let them eat any. The directors/VP came back through to grab a final cookie. And then I cleaned up the mess and took the leftovers back to my desk, where a handful of people were made very happy at the opportunity to eat the leftover salad and cookies and cold fries.
From start to finish — I left my desk at 10:30 and made it back to my desk after 1:00. Nearly 1/3 of my day was spent fussing with food.
And yet I still managed to get almost everything done off my list I wrote up yesterday as well as a bunch of things that weren’t on the list. And that might just explain why I’m so stupidly tired when I get home sometimes.
Woohoo for crossing things off your list! I love that feeling of accomplishment : )
You did a good job with the food. What would they rather have – no food when they are ready too early or cold food when they are ready too late? Maybe next time you will need to communicate more clearly when the food will be ready and, yeah, have a better way to keep it warm. But for the first time you did fine. People aren’t judging you as much as you think. They are busier judging themselves and worrying about what people are thinking about them!