Skip The Budgie

They are generous enough to give me the 'day off' to help with the graduation ceremonies. These traditionally occur on a cold rainy November day and involve a lot of standing around and being polite to people. We are told that we are the friendliest Faculty - this is the last day in three weeks worth of be-gowned mayhem in Bristol Cathedral.

Hmpf. Friendliest Faculty my arse! To the students maybe. NOT to the poor timetabler, I can tell you that right now. I waste another morning on 'exchanges' with Academics whose answer to me telling them that there really aren't any rooms available for the whole afternoon on a teaching week is to wait until the day before they asked for the rooms and saying well we can't do any other time, are you sure there isn't anywhere?

Well. Let me see. I already looked weeks ago, but have any rooms miraculously appeared out of the sky? No. Has there been any building work going on that would lead you to think we suddenly have more rooms than I, the Faculty Timetabler, had originally thought? No. Are you now completely screwed because you thought that being stubborn would suddenly free up a room? Oh yes, yes you are.

There is a discussion about a conference booking I made weeks ago. We had a big discussion then, too. The problem is that I don't have any rooms before 11:30 on the day they want to hold it. So, it is all agreed, they will start at 11:30 instead of 10. So today, the guy comes back to me and says Dave - do you know who has the room before this and whether they will be using it right up to 11.30am? If so then we may have a problem in that the timing is tight for the programme so if we have 40 or so people waiting to get settled in the room with others not coming out until 11.30am then this could be a bit difficult. I'm hoping the room might be vacated by 11.20am? Could you check please and get in touch with the person concerned and explain the slight predicament.

...

I may be slightly remiss in thinking that perhaps this could have been thought of when the booking was originally made? No? If the room was to be vacated before 11:30 do you think I would have said that the room WAS NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL 11:30? Do you? Really? Is this REALLY a "slight predicament". Am I wrong to get upset that he's acting as if it's my fault?

Later on in the email he asks if the room will be free before 11:30 for the lunches to be brought in! Is it me? Maybe I don't get enough sleep these days.

I'm accidentally a bit rude in my reply. Well not rude as such, more facetious. The trick is to write what you really think first, to get it out of your system and then carefully edit your reply so as not to actually upset anybody or make them feel TOO stupid. Well I sort of left a little bit of the original email in.

To make matters worse, the person who is going to be in the room turns round later and tells me they won't be using it anyway, like I should have psychically known this. So it's all sorted out. Or at least it will all work out like everybody wants and they will all remain convinced that the whole debacle is my fault.