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- Aug 12, 2014
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So last week had first meeting of this year's postgraduate committee, President was dumping a bit on Secretary girl whom I like, firstly told her off for arriving to the first meeting without minute-taking equipment, then gave her some membership lists to type up, then it turned out there was a 5-page re-affiliation form that had to be submitted to the University, at this point I stepped in and said I would take care of that form (thinking I didn't think it was fair that all tasks go to Secretary). I asked Secretary girl if she had time to meet with me later in the week with the membership lists, she said no. This was a little ungracious I thought, but I didn't care.
So, on the day the form was due I was working from home, I had to compile a fair bit of info but luckily most committee members were responsive on email, I grabbed membership lists, bank account details and people's phone numbers and various other shit. Some stuff I got the runaround on, so I dealt with it myself. Like, nobody seemed to have the minutes for 28/5 meeting which I had to attach, so I quickly wrote up some minutes based on my recollection of the meeting and attached them. Similarly, I didn't have a Constitution for the group, so I downloaded the standard Constitution and filled in some details and scanned it. I always take initiative in this manner.
Anyway, I knew that when the documents reached the University they would basically be filed in some dusty place and forgotten about, nobody would pay them more than a glance to check everything was there... so the main thing to me was getting the form in on time. Because I had to play a bit loose I didn't copy everyone the details, I was just hoping it would go smoothly and nobody would look too closely. Well, since then President has been hassling me for a copy of what I submitted, saying she has to check it and blah blah... so I sent her all my attachments, although I didn't have the main form itself.
When I saw her today she also apparently had the 28/5 minutes which she had referred me to someone else on (who didn't have it), so I was unimpressed she couldn't have just sent me those and saved me a lot of time. I asked her for a copy, because I had already communicated with university and found the person responsible was on leave, so nobody had looked at our form and I was gonna submit a new one in coming days. She was shocked to hear that I had filled in the minutes myself, I couldn't understand why, since the minutes are simply a record of a meeting, and can be provided by anybody who was present.
Anyway, so President asks if we can redo the form together and I say sure... but it ends up being that she calls me in the evening after I've just got home, she's all agitated, so I suggest
(1) we do it together in the morning -- not acceptable to her, because the due date for the form was Tuesday, I point out that we got it in by the deadline and nobody's gonna object to a minor change...
(2) she meet me at Starbucks in between uni and my home and we do it there -- not acceptable to her, because she wants to stay at the uni and work late
(3) I'll redo the form at home and email it to her, and if she approves I will resubmit it to the University -- not acceptable to her, for reasons that weren't clear to me.
She says she is gonna do it herself and submit it tonight, I point out that it's a waste of time to redo work that has already been done, it took me several hours to gather all the information for the form, she can redo that process if she wants, but I already have the information, and besides, I said I would do a job, if it's not good enough then I'll fix it, but there's no need for her to redo the job. So I then suggest
(4) I'll come back to the uni and we will get it done tonight. She starts to protest and I say well, we'll talk about it when I get there. See you in 20 minutes.
Anyway, so I get to uni and redo the form, I still don't have the 28/5 minutes so I go upstairs to get them from her and find that she has already redone all the work on her computer, she apparently has most of the information since she's been involved with committee for quite a while... I say "I told you not to do that" but otherwise I don't protest, I just set about finding the bank account details she needs and so forth, however by the time I get my mobile internet working again I've lost my copy of the form and she's finished anyway. She's also saying "don't submit your form because I will submit this one" and stuff like that.
She checks and double checks everything in a rather ostentatious manner and starts printing and saving stuff and converting to pdf and so on, I'm a bit puzzled what she's doing so I ask her and she gives generic responses like "this attachment was wrong and we have to resubmit" in a rather ticked off tone. Anyway, then she eventually submits but it does not work due to a technical problem. So I ask her to print out what she's done (because it's good to have a printout for reference for future committee members, this is something I learned when I submitted the first time and didn't receive a copy or any confirmation), and to send me the printout and the revised attachments and I will deal with it from there. This goes back and forth and eventually I say "okay... so you don't want me to do anything? sure".
She's already found another solution which is to submit by email and forget the online form, so she's doing that. Eventually she dismisses me and says thanks for coming in... I say "hmm, well now I know how to do this for next time". I wonder if I handled this situation correctly. Law of least effort would dictate that when she called me at home saying she wants to redo everything, I just say sure, fine, knock yourself out. But I had to acknowledge to myself that I had not submitted the correct information in the first place, and would have welcomed the opportunity to fix it. How could I have handled this more dominantly?
Ray
So, on the day the form was due I was working from home, I had to compile a fair bit of info but luckily most committee members were responsive on email, I grabbed membership lists, bank account details and people's phone numbers and various other shit. Some stuff I got the runaround on, so I dealt with it myself. Like, nobody seemed to have the minutes for 28/5 meeting which I had to attach, so I quickly wrote up some minutes based on my recollection of the meeting and attached them. Similarly, I didn't have a Constitution for the group, so I downloaded the standard Constitution and filled in some details and scanned it. I always take initiative in this manner.
Anyway, I knew that when the documents reached the University they would basically be filed in some dusty place and forgotten about, nobody would pay them more than a glance to check everything was there... so the main thing to me was getting the form in on time. Because I had to play a bit loose I didn't copy everyone the details, I was just hoping it would go smoothly and nobody would look too closely. Well, since then President has been hassling me for a copy of what I submitted, saying she has to check it and blah blah... so I sent her all my attachments, although I didn't have the main form itself.
When I saw her today she also apparently had the 28/5 minutes which she had referred me to someone else on (who didn't have it), so I was unimpressed she couldn't have just sent me those and saved me a lot of time. I asked her for a copy, because I had already communicated with university and found the person responsible was on leave, so nobody had looked at our form and I was gonna submit a new one in coming days. She was shocked to hear that I had filled in the minutes myself, I couldn't understand why, since the minutes are simply a record of a meeting, and can be provided by anybody who was present.
Anyway, so President asks if we can redo the form together and I say sure... but it ends up being that she calls me in the evening after I've just got home, she's all agitated, so I suggest
(1) we do it together in the morning -- not acceptable to her, because the due date for the form was Tuesday, I point out that we got it in by the deadline and nobody's gonna object to a minor change...
(2) she meet me at Starbucks in between uni and my home and we do it there -- not acceptable to her, because she wants to stay at the uni and work late
(3) I'll redo the form at home and email it to her, and if she approves I will resubmit it to the University -- not acceptable to her, for reasons that weren't clear to me.
She says she is gonna do it herself and submit it tonight, I point out that it's a waste of time to redo work that has already been done, it took me several hours to gather all the information for the form, she can redo that process if she wants, but I already have the information, and besides, I said I would do a job, if it's not good enough then I'll fix it, but there's no need for her to redo the job. So I then suggest
(4) I'll come back to the uni and we will get it done tonight. She starts to protest and I say well, we'll talk about it when I get there. See you in 20 minutes.
Anyway, so I get to uni and redo the form, I still don't have the 28/5 minutes so I go upstairs to get them from her and find that she has already redone all the work on her computer, she apparently has most of the information since she's been involved with committee for quite a while... I say "I told you not to do that" but otherwise I don't protest, I just set about finding the bank account details she needs and so forth, however by the time I get my mobile internet working again I've lost my copy of the form and she's finished anyway. She's also saying "don't submit your form because I will submit this one" and stuff like that.
She checks and double checks everything in a rather ostentatious manner and starts printing and saving stuff and converting to pdf and so on, I'm a bit puzzled what she's doing so I ask her and she gives generic responses like "this attachment was wrong and we have to resubmit" in a rather ticked off tone. Anyway, then she eventually submits but it does not work due to a technical problem. So I ask her to print out what she's done (because it's good to have a printout for reference for future committee members, this is something I learned when I submitted the first time and didn't receive a copy or any confirmation), and to send me the printout and the revised attachments and I will deal with it from there. This goes back and forth and eventually I say "okay... so you don't want me to do anything? sure".
She's already found another solution which is to submit by email and forget the online form, so she's doing that. Eventually she dismisses me and says thanks for coming in... I say "hmm, well now I know how to do this for next time". I wonder if I handled this situation correctly. Law of least effort would dictate that when she called me at home saying she wants to redo everything, I just say sure, fine, knock yourself out. But I had to acknowledge to myself that I had not submitted the correct information in the first place, and would have welcomed the opportunity to fix it. How could I have handled this more dominantly?
Ray
