The EXACT Definition of Irony...

[eris esoteric]

Going in to work on your day off to attend a meeting.

Being told during the meeting that the comptroller has, again, decided that the busiest month of the year is a GOOD time to install new hardware, and that the hardware will be installed later that night.

Trying to bring up an issue during the meeting because you're finally in the same room as the people you've been trying to email for a month about an issue, and being told by your boss that there isn't time to talk about that issue.

Having your boss talk for ten minutes about how you don't have time to talk about that issue.

Watching your boss walk everyone through a diagram of how the computer system is integrated, and see her contradict herself three times on proper procedure for taking the network down and putting it up again.

AFTER the meeting, attending a training session on cleaning up "biohazardous wastes".*

Watching the trainer open up the "spill kit" provided by the front desk, only to find that half of the items that were supposed to be in the kit are missing.

Being told after the training session that the boss you were in a meeting with before needs to talk to you again. Locating said boss, and having her ask you to fill out your annual confidential employee satisfaction survey. In front of her.



*footnote to the above:

The reason I had to attend the "biohazardous waste" cleanup training session was because of an incident we had a week or two ago. Someone on the fifth floor... uh... "deposited a biohazard" on the fifth floor in front of the rooms... and in the stairwell, and down to the fourth floor...

My housekeepers worked for two HOURS to clean this mess up. Finally, they had simply had enough, and couldn't take anymore. So I called the housekeeping manager, and the supervisor, and got no answer. Then I called on the the front desk supervisors, and he told me to call the campus overnight emergency cleanup crew. I called them, and they sent someone in. Her response was "oh, didn't you know that we have this powder stuff, that when you sprinkle it on wet... uh... biohazards, turns it into a sawdust-like substance that you can then just vacuum up?

Since the answer was NO, we DIDN'T know that, and it would have been NICE for someone to TELL us this, the two night housekeepers, the coworker and I was all scheduled for biohazard clean up training.

booYAH.

(And yes, I am talking about vomit.)

[emeleel]

October is your busiest month of the year?

And thank goodness it was "only" vomit - I thought somebody had deposited something more intentional and, um, solid. Blech.

[eris esoteric]

emeleel said

October is your busiest month of the year?

Well, the hotel is owned by a Big 10 University, which means that football is very big to the people that own the hotel, which means that the weekends when we have home football games the hotel is booked, almost entirely by people who are so important that I should be calling them to see if they want to stay in my humble hotel on the weekend of the game...

[poseidon]

I can't tell you the number of times my wife, at her previous job, was called into work on her day off to attend mandatory meetings. It was funny, but the mandatory meetings only seemed to occur on Thursday, which was her day off. They never occurred on any other day, and it wasn't as if Thursday was just convenient -- each of the five nurses had one weekday off.

When there weren't "mandatory" meetings, there would be "informal" meetings, and my wife would find out about changes that everyone voted on but her, and those changes affected her job.

The good news? She's at a better job earning more money where, apparently, the sun rises and sets because of her.

I can also appreciate the "I don't have time for that now" speech. I heard that more times than I ever care to admit. We'd have meetings that were nothing more than total wastes of time -- such as "How to properly park a company car." I swear to you, this was a real, two-hour meeting. Meanwhile, I wanted to discuss something of real importance that had great effect on our day-to-day job, and was told that it would have to wait until another meeting because, "How to properly park a company car" was the topic of the day, and the entire two-hour meeting probably wouldn't be enough time to discuss everything about parking a company car.

If anyone is curious, we learned about really important stuff like which parking spaces to avoid using. I, of course, brought up the question of, "What happens when you've got a full schedule that day, and the parking lot has only empty one space, and that space is one of the 'spaces to avoid?'" That generated a look of disgust from the facilitator and he didn't bother to answer the question.

[mtomm[$]]

They should be labeled VOMIT kits! In fact, I made labels just this week that said VOMIT KIT. My job is so exciting!! After much discussion about what wording should be used I made an excutive decision and decided on vomit. No mistaking what that means.

Three or more cheers to your clean-up employee!