On Deck

The joy of being the only admin in the building continues.  Four comfortably-compensated professionals spent part of two days setting up a video conference, which is a case of making magic happen given less than one day's notice.  This morning, nobody appeared and the call spontaneously disconnected after a few minutes' non-engagement.

The whole thing was nobody's "fault" - it was all a failure in communications through a group not in direct lines with the right parties.  The result was four people striving hard to provide the best service we could, to no result.

Even without fault to find, though - when I think of the man hours wasted out of all our salaries, and the priorities pushed around to make nothing happen, it's hard not to consider how literally valuable proper communications skills really are.  I wonder how much *effective* work we could have done, had someone just contacted the single solitary participant we did all this for (yep - all this was for ONE participant to have video capability - and that person was working from home today, because they had no idea this was being done).

I did contact that person this morning, once I was told who it was (everyone else was still saying "we will find out where the communications broke down").

I love my job, and have immense loyalty for my employer, but the baffling habit ingrained throughout the culture there, whereby communication is rarely direct, confounds and maddens me.

One more day on deck as the only admin in the house - and then, ironically enough, LABOR DAY.  Yeesh.