Your inability to plan is not MY emergency.

A couple times a year I have the displeasure of doing an educational presentation to a college class that most students take because they think it'll be an easy A. Generally I don't mind to much as long as they're respectful enough to quietly sleep through it, as opposed to asking idiotic questions or texting. I know the professor, and do this as a favor. For the past few years, she has had an adult student as her TA who understood that many people who work have other obligations which require us to plan our lives more than a week in advance. This year she has a college-aged TA who has no idea what this means. She emails me and asks if I can do the presentation with 4 days notice, I had other obligations that night and emailed her back with the request that I get more notice, an offer of other dates, and a list of other people to contact. A week after the original contact, I get an email from her asking if I can do the presentation with 3 days notice. Again I email back with the reminder that I require more than 3 days notice to do a presentation as I have other obligations and include the original list of possible dates.

Today she calls and asks again if I can do the presentation, now with 2 days notice, as she "didn't get a reply from me", which I take to mean that she got the email, read it and thought she could make a personal call to guilt trip me so she doesn't look like the disorganized idiot she is. Again I tell her "No I can't. I need more notice to do things outside of my work hours, I work a second job and have other obligations." She actually says "Really?" as though I generally spend my days with my thumb up my butt waiting for her call. I reply with "Yes, I have a second job and really can't do this on such short notice." She asks "Well, can any of your coworkers do this?" and I inform her "I do not keep my coworkers schedules, but most of them also have non-work obligations. I did include a list of contact information for them in the first email I sent you, so you can feel free to contact them yourself. However, as I've said a couple times now, it usually works better to give working people as much notice as possible." I then offered her the date that I had originally said I could do it, and instead of saying "Yes, come on that day" she said, "Well I'll get back to you".

HAH! She has no presenter for this, and probably won't have one when she calls again 2 days before I said I could do it. After all, who knows what will pop up between now and then. Life sucks when you've never been told No and suddenly meet someone who refuses to tongue wash your dumper, doesn't it?

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

This is how 'working life' is going to be for everyone in ten-fifteen years time. Nothing but millions of ill-prepared ninnies butting heads and completely unable to even set a meeting, no less produce anything worthwhile.

Maybe you're tempted not to answer your phone to this moron over the next few days... and then, three days after the day you were supposed to have spoken, send her a dumb email saying "Um, no I'm afraid I can't do the (3 days ago). I do hope you didn't plan around me."

- - - - - - - -
"The death of creativity is a pram in the hallway"
- Cyril Connolly

Amethyst Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is how 'working life' is going to be for
> everyone in ten-fifteen years time. Nothing but
> millions of ill-prepared ninnies butting heads and
> completely unable to even set a meeting, no less
> produce anything worthwhile.
Sadly, I'm thinking that is going to happen much, much sooner than we think...as in it's happening now. Thankfully I have the luxury of being able to opt out of dealing with interns, so I don't have to work with that sort of person much.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

This is one of my BIG pet peeves and I have dealt with it quite often. I think it shows a COMPLETE lack of respect of the person's time and a COMPLETE lack of knowledge or care that a presentation doesn't "just happen" all on it's own, but rather it takes time, effort, and appropriate scheduling. Not much pisses me off more than people who see some very small part of whatever it is that we might do, such as a presentation, and ASSUME that the time spent on what they can actually see is all that's required of us. This happened a lot when I was a real estate appraiser. Loan officers would generally have ALL of their package ready and would have taken a MINIMUM of a MONTH to have surveys done, credit reports, home inspections, repairs made, yards sodded, etc.........and then call me at NOON on Christmas Eve and INSIST that I "run out there" and get them an appraisal so this lovely famblee can close their loan the day after Christmas. They act as if the 45 minutes I spend at the house is all it takes to hand them the final 25+ page report, complete with pictures of the subject house and 3-5 other houses in the area as well. ASSHOLES.

I have told those same fuckers over and over and over and over, that even if it was all I had to do that day, AND there were no snags, no problems, no traffic, etc.......it would take me a MINIMUM of eight hours to prepare it which would put me working straight through until late at night on Christmas Eve IF I skipped dinner and only took one bathroom break, or having to come in on Christmas day and finish it up in order to meet their deadline. While I am busting my ass, missing holiday time off, and working alone in a dark desolate downtown building, they will be sipping eggnog, setting out Santa Claus, and gnawing on a turkey leg. Of course I never succumbed to their demands, but the very fact that they asked me to do this pissed me off royally.

People who spring "emergencies" on others who provide a service to them and demand immediate satisfaction without any consideration or concept of how time consuming or inconvenient their request might be are SELFISH BASTARDS. They are deserving of no reponse beyond, "No, I can not meet your needs within that timeframe. Like I have said many times in the beginning and in the past, I need a minimum of a week's advance notice and that is not going to change. It's really a waste of your time for you to continue to ask me to do something within a time frame which is impossible for me to meet, perhaps you can find someone else who can better meet your demands", which is pretty much what I said to the repeat offenders. Oddly, they generally start acting right and following MY rules after I lay it out for them in that curt manner. They find out pretty fast that professionals who need NO (or little) notice to produce or perform generally are not very good at what they do, hence the extra time to accept jobs without notice.

I HATE THESE PEOPLE and avoid them whenever possible.

It seems that there are so many people today who are inconsiderate and disorganised and they get pissed off when no one comes to their rescue. Plan ahead, ninnies!

I suspect that before long we will be seeing all kinds of nonsense such as that. I see it already at times. This is more bad parenting and the tendency to teach children that the whole universe revolves around them. Therefore, they feel ENTITLED and expect others, to when they say "Jump" ask how high.

Maybe if she doesn't get her way, she will learn to plan in future, Feh.
Her lack of planning is definitely NOT your emergency!

Good for you, Feh, for sticking to your guns and not letting this person guilt you into anything! I encounter the same thing, too. I work with kids, so people assume I have zero boundaries between my personal life and professional life. They are distinctly put out when I guard my personal time, especially if it's a last minute notice. I'm willing to be flexible, but that requires some planning too.

I love the fact that because you didn't tell her what she wanted to hear, she decided to pretend that your emails just didn't exist. People are morons sometimes.

Nothing good comes from something pulled out your ass, that's for sure.

Thanks you all!
:beer

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

We've got a bunch of workplace-new-comers here too, and they reek of inability.

They were taught the world will accomodate them, and by golly, they come to work with just that attitude!