measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Little admin perks One of the big perks of being an administrative assistant is food. We get to sample all of the catering companies to see if their services are of the right quality, cost, and size-order appropriateness. Today for lunch, four other admins and I were toasted to the nines with food samples. It was amazing. Gourmet food, beautiful presentation, and really for not much more than what we pay now for pretty basic platters of sandwiches and such. This place runs a restaurant and has HUGE kitchens in the underbasements-- one level for baking, and the other for main course prep. They make everything there. We had two wonderful salads, a turkey and cranberry stew that was to DIE for, salmon (made perfectly-- still moist) with a honey mustard sauce, chicken with a dill sauce, little quesadilla plates with all of the fixings (and a fruit salsa which was most interesting and refreshing), and then all of the sandwich plate fixings-- turkey salad (again, with cranberry), a chicken salad with grapes (think Waldorf salad sans walnuts), and a very light but wonderful tunafish salad. And the desserts? Argle argle argle... Plus we got a full tour of the kitchens and the catering service rooms, met the different people, etc. It was fabulous. AND they have a cafe open for lunches and dinners. I'm sold on a new lunch spot for healthy salads and such. It seriously made my day. There's nothing better than caterer sampling. [bar] The meeting yesterday morning did go much better than Linda and I thought it would. Even our Bigger Boss, Carol, thought our group is just much more cohesive and civil to each other than the one down in New Jersey. There were heated discussions, but no attacks at each other (which apparently happened down there). The building super, on the other hand, was a different matter. Let me preface this with a bit of backstory-- my department is quite large, particularly for this company. We have 35 people. There is only one meeting room that accommodates us. If that's taken, we are in a bit of a quandry for meeting space. Usually we solve this by splitting the meeting into two sections, doing the department split by last name, and Linda and I go through the entire thing twice. Well, with Bigger Boss running the meeting and her schedule, that wasn't an option. So I had to think fast. The only other place in the building that would fit us? The cafeteria. So I popped down there and asked the chef if she minded if we took over the back tables for a meeting, promising to put everything back as it had been afterwards, etc. I've done this before, and she was cool with it. Apparently, in my two years at this company, I've never actually learned the proper protocol for getting the cafeteria.
Ten minutes into the meeting, one of the facilities managers for the building owner comes down with our company facility manager, Susan. Susan asks me if I can pull away for a few minutes to talk, and I do so with no problem. The office manager guy immediately starts RAILING into me-- literally screaming at me for having this meeting in the cafeteria, and how I should have asked to use it, and how the building "doesn't belong to Pearson" and where did I get off thinking we could use the room, and how he was going to kick us out of there right now. Mind you-- this is happening literally 10 to 15 feet from the meeting taking place. In full view and earshot of everyone in my department. This guy's behavior can only be described as a complete psychopath. Absolutely no professionalism whatsoever. I calmly explained that I'd always come down to the kitchen to check on the room, and it had never been a problem before, so that's how I understood it was done. I apologized for the breech, and said that in the future, I knew to go through Susan to ask him. I explained how it was a last-minute meeting and due to our department's size, it was the only space available. I made the judgement call, however poor it might have been. But through the entire thing, I kept calm, apologetic, knowing that anything smacking him back would simply goad him further. That didn't help the asshole's attitude at all, however. He kept screaming, threatening to throw us out, giving us shit for not ordering coffee and a continental breakfast through the cafeteria (it's awful food for one, and was a last minute impossible to order one for another), yadda yadda yadda. Linda finally came over to see what the guy's problem was, and while he kept being an ass, Linda pulled that "I'm the mother of two young children" voice out and basically ended his rant for the time being, making it clear with the tone that he was doing nothing but making the situation worse for him by continuing because we were NOT going to budge. Susan managed to get him away and did something. I later sent her an email to apologize and thank her for her diplomacy with him. (Rule of Thumb: Always kiss the facilities manager's ass in case you need a favor someday). Meanwhile, we rejoined the meeting. I was completely shaken, but managed to fight back the tears of the embarrassment (not for screwing up, but for his literal attack in front of everyone) as I sat there. I didn't hear much of the meeting because of it. I spent most of the time staring at the table, trying to emotionally ground myself and calm myself down. Every once in a while I looked up, and noticed that at least one person was looking my way at all times. That didn't help me calm down much. Once the meeting was done, a couple of people immediately walked over to see if I was okay, and I put on my pseudo-macho "no biggie" attitude, even though I was still pretty wigged. Several people through the day commented on how much of an ass he was, and apparently a couple people marched down to the office manager's office, demanding to speak to her about the incident. I think the rumour of the situation has flown all over the office by now. The thing about it that killed me? As we were straightening out the tables and cleaning everything up, the asshole comes down and offers to help carry stuff up to our spread-hanging room like nothing happened. I was livid. No apology from the asshole-- not even an acknowledgement about his temper problem. But not wanting to sink to his level of inhuman behavior, I accepted his help, keeping a very quiet distance away from him, and thanked him once I got upstairs. It's a good thing that I'm not the PH manager. I'd have written a recommendation to the higher-ups complaining about the man, as well as to the office manager, expressing how if this is their promotion of professionalism, perhaps we should look for space elsewhere. (There's tons open everywhere-- and we rent two-thirds of this building. I want to see them find another 200-plus person office looking for space right now). Fucker. At least today's lunch reminded me why I do it sometimes... 3:34 p.m. - 10 October 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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