Awww, Tommy!

I'm pretty sure I was conceived just before my parents got married. And my mom wanted a big family (she LOVED babies), but I was an eerily good-tempered baby/well-behaved toddler, and mom worried any sibling of mine would be a demon baby.

mom worried any sibling of mine would be a demon baby.

I hope she appreciated the irony.

Dad certainly did.

Got sent to deliver brochures to a rep who would be representing us and other institutions at a trade show this weekend. I asked how many, I was handed maybe twenty. I asked if that was enough, and was told by bossman that he didn't give a shit. When I went to drop them off, the lady was shocked, said she'd requested 500-1000. I was mortified. Conveyed the numbers to bossman. He eventually responded that he couldn't be faulted for not having gotten the numbers from her (which is possible, but if he cared about the opportunity to market our own organization, I'd have thought he would assume some bigger number). It's all so half-assed. I told him point-blank that if we aren't going to give our all as part of this consortium, I don't see the point at all. It's frankly embarrassing. He apologized for putting me in the position I ended up in, but in the end still doesn't give a hoot. Which to me means that if this were to come about next year, and we're both still here, his only deviance in behavior would be to take over a measly twenty copies himself so that the greatest sin, me being put in an awkward position, was avoided. And it's not the point! The point is organizational embarrassment. All in or pull out, where's the professional pride? If you don't believe in it, if you find the consortium stupid, a waste of time, and an embarrassment of organizational skills with no follow through, why are we involved?

::bangs head on desk::

And I'm sure that it's possible that the person requesting the materials failed to specify numbers, and it's possible that she did give numbers, but since her POC was our ED, that he failed to convey the original numbers to bossman. And I'm the only one who gave a fuck enough to ask for numbers the morning I was requested to deliver the materials. And that was like pulling teeth and a burden that I was putting on bossman to give a fuck about it (ED is now on vacation and not around to not give a fuck). I'm starting to really miss my 2012 bosslady. New bossman is less about the org or and more about his own personal passions that he's trying to integrate into the org.. He wants to give a fucking lecture on gender in the landscape. Of the people that attend our classes, who would be interested in that? That is not our clientele. That is a highbrow, intellectual, industry focused idea (that I find at face value reductive and irrelevant and possibly hurtful). Our clientele are garden club members, house wives, and retirees. We will not be attracting Michael Dirr and Alan Fucking Armitage to our lectures.

tl:dr, I am apparently PMSing

Timelies all!

Happy Birthday -t!

Congrats Jess!

Congrats ND!

We will not be attracting Michael Dirr and Alan Fucking Armitage to our lectures.

Alan Armitage is a nice guy. You might be able to persuade him, but it would probably take more brochures. Seriously, though, how could your boss imagine a trade show would need fewer than a couple hundred brochures?

(I have no idea what it takes to get Alan Armitage out of Georgia. In Georgia, he'll speak to a garden club, although it's more of a Big Deal than it was 20 years ago.)

By which I mean, Ginger, that we might be able to attract some high-profile guest lecturers, but we don't have the audience to attract high profile attendees. Which seems to be where bossman is aiming with his ideas.

Hey, maybe I really am being a debby downer, and it could work out great, but it still strikes of intellectual onanism with a voyeuristic streak.

Seriously, though

Thank you for understanding my outrage. Even if I'd grabbed everything we had on hand, it still wouldn't have been enough (we print in house, as well as the folding).

I once worked for an executive who would not OK ordering copies of his brochure from a bureau. Then I printed and folded color copies laboriously by hand when the project became overdue and urgent. Idiot.