Where's My Donking Time Machine!?!?

Among some of my pet peeves are incompetence and the inability to read. Unfortunately I see stuff like what I'm about to write about all the time. Email seems to bring out the stupid in normally semi-intelligent people. I'm breaking a rule of mine that I don't write about work related items on this blog, but I just can't let this pass up, so I'll be as vague as possible with unnecessary details.

There’s this item that is having a problem at work. Last week late Friday we talked about it, but one of the key individuals (our Donkey for this post) wasn’t present. Monday was a company holiday, so talk resumed yesterday. It was decided that a group of us needs to get together to discuss the next steps. Thus starts the emails…

Boss to us: Meeting request, 2/22/06 10:00am-10:30am.

Me to group: Boss, we have a meeting from 10:00am-11:00am for (insert name of large important project here). Could we reschedule this for another time?

So far, this sounds pretty straight forward. Enter Donkey:

Donkey to group: How about 10:30am?

(THUD), as my head hits the desk. Donkey hasn’t been the brightest of people since he started at the company, but man, can we at least tell time ffs? So meanwhile I talk to the boss to find out what other times he can make. He said based on the fact that the meeting is 30 minutes, he can either make 11am or it will have to wait until 4pm. I also discovered that because I replied to the email, I’m now in charge of getting a new time set up.

Me to group: Our meeting will still be going on at 10:30am. Does 11am work? I talked with the boss and he has time at 11am, but after that his first opening is 4pm.

Donkey to group: How about 11:30? 11 is a daily meeting with the team involved in this issue.

So here we have 2 attempts at scheduling a freaking meeting that have failed. It’s a meeting, people. Pick a time and go. Figure out how many minutes are needed, look at your calendar, and pick a time. It’s not brain surgery. The boss stated pretty clearly that for a 30 minute meeting, 11 or 4 are the times that work. So I talk to the boss, we have a few laughs at Donkey’s expense, and he moves things around to accommodate the 11:30am time. Everything is set, and half the company is then invited to the meeting, which is a conference call for most people, since many of them are half-way across the country.

Fast forward to today, meeting day. It’s 11am and I’m hungry. But no, I need to wait until after this meeting to eat. If there’s one thing that bothers me almost as much as incompetence, it’s when people fuck with my lunch time. Waiting and waiting, and 11:30am comes along. I jump on the conference call, and there’s confusion. To make a somewhat long story a bit shorter, it turns out that Donkey is still in his 11am meeting, which is scheduled for an hour.

Now my head hurts, and I just wasted more time writing with this. And I’m still hungry!

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

========================================

Update...

Boss sends out a new meeting request for 2:00-2:30pm today.

Key person to group: Conflict at this time - I can't avoid. Am available at 3:00pm for 30 minutes and 5:00pm or later...

Donkey to group: key person's attendance is critical. Boss, can we try for 4:00?

My god. How fucking hard is it to tell time? Now he makes key person almost seem like a jerk for having to explain to him how to read a fucking clock. I'm pretty sure this asshat makes about twice what I do, which makes me sick!

I really hope I don't have any more updates to this, but based on what I've seen so far, there's a really good chance I'll have another!