if it's sunny, clear, and 72º but it's too windy to comfortably sit outside and blog, is it still a "pretty day"?

you'd be hard pressed to bring up a topic on which i don't have an opinion. this is less about my being well-informed than about my being opinionated. at work my department is merging with another department, and by merging i mean one person is coming from the other department. in my opinion, this is not a problem. in the other person's opinion it is a problem. this other person has already informed our now mutual boss how things will be and what she will & will not put up with from little ol' me. the crux is that my job boils down to telling other people what to do and when to do it, and other people tend not to like that. go figure.

what folks conventiently and continually overlook is that i am not just making stuff up for them to do. i am not having them pick up my dry cleaning or put that wasabi stuff on dried peas for me. my job is to hold others accountable to a schedule they previously agreed to. the way that folks react to reminders of previous commitments that are not materializing is contextual.

it's like, if you say you will meet me at the coffee store at 0800, and 0800 comes & goes, and i ring you up and remind you that you previously committed to 0800 which has come & gone, how would you react? perhaps you'd be all "sorry sorry forgot the time!!" but perhaps you'd be all, "the baby's forcibly pooing something that loosely resembles wasabi peas so you can take your 0800 coffee date and shove it!!" or perhaps you'd be all, "i texted you at 0755 and informed you of the Curling Iron Incident which resulted in a delay which resulted in my rescheduling our appt for 0815. please consult your texts for this update."

some reasons for being late are outside our control and some lateness is caused by our neglect. some is caused by circumstances unfolding in a particular way and as we see these circumstances unfolding, we have the opportunity to inform others who will be affected by our lateness. when we reactively explain our lateness, or proactively provide an impending lateness update, to friends - we call that common courtesy. when we are asked to provide the same sort of info to our coworkers, we call that micromanaging and we rail against being held accountable and we proclaim our busyness and our multiple pressure-laden priorities.

but turn it around and think about how we react to lateness. with friends, we are forgive lateness - sometimes again and again. we laugh about how some people are always late. we tell joe the game starts at 7:30 even though it starts at 8:00 because we know that's the only way to get him there on time. haha, funny late joe. now, at work, funny late joe is a real pain in the arse, but instead of setting him up to fail and then vilifying him, let's just tell joe his part of the project is due at 7:30 when it's really due at 8:00. scheduling should be fluid, proactive, flexible, tailored. the alternative is to do joe's job for him, and goodness knows, we are all too busy for that.