Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Incompetence Ventilation

I'm WAY annoyed this morning.  By stupid people.  Asking stupid questions.  Or just having stupid things coming out of their mouths in general.  It started out this morning, when I came into work.  The lady who owns the custodial company we use was here, replacing light bulbs.  She asked me if I knew where her other stepladder was, which I didn't.  I didn't even know there was more than one stepladder in the building.  She said, "I think it's in the boiler room still from when that pipe burst a couple weeks ago.  Do you have a key to the boiler room?"   Because apparently the master key doesn't work on that door.  So I walked down the hallway to the door that had a sign on it that said "Boiler Room" and started trying keys on the knob.  She stops me and says, "No, it's the next door."  The next door has a sign on it that says "Air Conditioner Room."  Silly me, I thought she meant the boiler room when she said the words "boiler room."  And then she had the audacity to try to make me feel stupid because she gave me incorrect information.  I dread each morning seeing this lady walking around the building because she is just socially inept enough to not be able to make normal conversation without there being several awkward pauses in the conversation when she has nothing else to say to me and I have nothing I want to talk to her about.  One morning she was telling me that she cleans another executive suites building here in Downtown Boulder called The Highland Building.  I am familiar with this building because I interviewed there about a year ago and I really wanted the job.  When I interviewed, I was told I could have the possibility of picking up extra hours by cleaning the condos that were owned by the same company that owned the executive suites.  I told the cleaning lady that, and she got upset and said, "No, the girls at the desk there aren't allowed to do that anymore."  She got legitimately aggravated when I told her what I'd been told when I interviewed there A YEAR AGO.  I really do hate seeing her in the mornings.  She throws off my energy for at least the first few hours I'm at work after I see her.

I guess I am not sure how the security system for our building functions.  I know that I have a key card that I need to pass in front of a sensor to get into the building each morning because the doors don't unlock until 8am.  The people who work in this building know that they need a key card that they need to pass in front of a sensor to get into the building each morning before 8am.  However, the past two mornings, the alarm has gone off in the building because somehow, magically, someone has entered the building without using a key card to unlock the door.  It's even better when I rush up the stairs to turn the alarm off (because I'm always downstairs making coffee when this occurs), and there's someone walking past me looking sheepish.  Apparently honesty and integrity are quite rare qualities, because every morning I've had to turn the alarm off, no one comes forward to apologize for accidentally setting it off in the first place, or to explain what happened.

And I am going to have to continue to deal with idiocy for the rest of the day because one of the attorneys that offices here is holding a deposition upstairs in our 5th floor conference room.  He has at least 5 other people up there, each of which has come to the front desk today to tell me either that they were here for a deposition or that they were looking for the attorney who had scheduled the deposition.  Perhaps it's just that my patience and compassion have already been drained out of me today, but I feel like if you're in a building that you're not familiar with, there is no reason to act high and mighty and secretive about why you're there in the first place.  Also, the attorney approached me yesterday to alert me to the meeting that would be taking place and that several people would be coming in to be involved in the meeting and that it was scheduled in the upstairs conference room.  My first reaction when the people started arriving was to just send them up to the conference room, because I was not told to watch out for a particular person with whom the attorney wished to speak before the deposition began.  Although there apparently was.  As people arrived, I sent them upstairs.  Multiple times the attorney came up to ask me if anyone else had arrived yet, and looked alarmed when I told him I'd sent them upstairs.  Being unaware that I was to inform him of anyone in particular's arrival, I directed everyone as far away from me as possible as quickly as possible.

Is that not the natural reaction to coming into contact with someone stupid?  Get them as far away from you as possible?  There are more people than I am comfortable with that work in this building - and thus in far too close of proximity to me - who are awkward, selfish, impulsive or just plain stupid, and it's taken me three short months to finally see it all clearly.  There are two conference rooms in this building, and there are some days when they're not booked at all, and there are some days that they are booked all day solid.  Someone with common sense would book a room as far in advance as possible, and most people do.  There are some people, though, in this building who are incredibly self-involved, like the guys who run the social media company (and every employee in that company is one of those awkward engineer types who can't properly socialize with other humans).  The owner comes up to me almost every single day to ask if a conference room is available RIGHT THEN, and then gets mad if it's not.

I think today is going to be a looooooooooooooong day.

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