The experiences and exploits of a college grad trying to make it in the "real world:" leaving school and friends in New England, moving south, and living with her boyfriend. Watch as I pretend to be an adult.
I love my job. I love my company. Every now and then, though, there'll be just a little too much posturing for me.
For example, this evening.
In addition to my work in one department, I'm moonlighting in another department for a software project team. I was tasked with securing a location for training module testing for a software package we're implementing.
Right. Well, we need a room large enough for 10-12 people, which narrows it down to three conference rooms. We also need it for two weeks, which makes the pickings even slimmer. Noting that one conference room was free except for three recurring meetings (all set by the same person) I thought it might be worthwhile to email said gentleman and ask if he anticipated needing the room in February. I wanted to make sure I didn't give the impression I was asking him to give up the room, so I worded my email ever so carefully. You can imagine I was rather surprised when I received his reply and found it...snippy. A shade away from rude, actually.
Of COURSE he still needed his conference room, he had TWENTY TWO people who came or called into these meetings and he needed a projector and internet and phones, etc etc etc. And who was I? Did (my department) work under so and so? And what piece of the software implementation did I work with? He works with Part C and as far as he knew I didn't work with that piece. Really, booking any of the large conference rooms for that long would be really difficult, after all, so many people needed the resources. More or less, his email came down to "Who are you, and what makes you think you can take my conference room?"
The email I sent back to him was so sweet I'm surprised it didn't make his teeth fall out. After thanking him for getting back to me SO quickly, I explained that I worked on the team for Software Project F, under Bigwigs A and B, but I "officially" worked in another department under Major Bigwig C. I assured him I understood getting a large conference room for two weeks would be difficult, but that I wanted to check with him before moving on to other alternatives.
His response was a 180 in tone. Ah, I worked for Major Bigwig C, of course. Best of luck to me in securing a conference room, if there was anything he could do, certainly let him know. Have a great evening!
Apparently if you work for someone important, you're worth being nice to.
