Dropped kid #2 off at college yesterday. The dorm had specific instructions. Said floors 1-3 were to arrive from 10-11:30, drive into the lots, unload, and immediately leave and park the car. Designated movers would deliver the belongings to the rooms, and were the only people who could use the elevators. They said to expect delays, and to just wait and be patient.
Sounded like a well-thought out, efficient system. So we got to campus around 9:15, picked up his pre-ordered books with no waithing, and walked/drove around campus to kill a few minutes before 10. Rolled up right at 10 and were pleased to see so few cars ahead of me - there were 3 rows of maybe 4-5 cars, with 4 or so cars in the process of being unloaded.
Want to guess when we were unloaded?
11:30!
What kills me now is that I just sat there like an idiot, not wanting to come across as a crank at my kid’s dorm on his 1st day. We could have schlepped his stuff up the stairs in maybe 3 trips! It just totally changed the tone of the day from things moving smoothly and getting things done early in the morning, to all of a sudden it being afternoon and time to grab a quick lunch and hit the road.
At least I got through pretty much all of the Clash on Broadway … And to my credit (and out of character), I didn’t yell or cuss at anyone!
So - anyone take any sizeable chunks of time from you lately? How did you handle it?
90 minutes on a conference call the other day. NINETY friggin’ minutes that I will never see again.
How did I handle it? I passed my officemate a note asking him to please shoot me. He didn’t though. When it was over (and officemate was gone), I shut my office door and cried from frustration. (Not just because of the wasted time—I’m not that much of a delicate flower. There were a whole lot of other things going on at the time).
Recently, I had the opportunity to go to a ropes/agility challenge course with a group of people from my church. I was told to meet at the church at 8:30. Got there, no one else was there, checked cell phone–I’d missed a call telling me that we were actually meeting a 9. Aparently 9 was still a miscommunication–at 9 I was not alone, but we were now waiting until 9:30 to load the group and travel together to the course.
I was a little irked–had I known we weren’t leaving till 9:30, I could have done all kinds of things which I didn’t end up doing.
The activity itself was fun, but ended up being more time consuming than expected–perhaps due to the rain, perhaps due to people being allowed to spend ages on the climbing wall, and a little due to having dinner out at a fairly nice restaurant–compared to the folk in tuxes attending outdoor weddings, the folk at my table were grimy and too casually dressed. Plus, we had to wait forever for our orders to be taken–on account of one of my companions being a dingbat–not the fault of the servers.
So when I finally got home after 7, I was beat. I’d really expected to be home mid-afternoon.
I got home from the gym and headed up to the shower while my 16 y.o son finished dinner (corned beef hash). I’m on the loo when I hear a crash and a yell for “Dad”. I finish up, go down stairs and find my son sitting on the bench and glass (and corned beef hash) all over the floor. He had dropped the lid and smashed the bowl and dinner. This takes half an hour to clean up, then I have my shower. Once I get out, my son asks about food. I resist the temptation to kick him, and go get cash, off to the nearest worthwhile chippie, and get some food (cause by now I am way too tired to cook). By the time I have eaten, it’s almost 9:00pm, and I start on the next boring job of the evening - rebuilding a laptop with a trashed hard drive. I had asked the owner to let HP deal with it under warranty, but he was worried he would lose it for too long, so I get to spend all evening swapping in recovery cd’s (16 in total, why not use a DVD or two) before copying his data back. I don’t finish till after 11:30pm.
And I had plans that included playing round setting up my portable laptop studio rig. I got nothing done, and I want my evening back.
I had ordered a car stereo (CD plus Sirius) three weeks earlier, and when it came in I made an appointment to have it installed. I won’t go through all the annoying crap because I’ll just get mad all over again, but it turned out they had ordered the wrong radio, which wasn’t even satellite ready, much less Sirius, and had not ordered the Sirius parts at all. Two different radios and three hours later, they determined that they still didn’t have the right parts, but they could order them and we could come back again (60 miles from home). And this on top of even more shit that I’ve left out. Several sales and customer service people and the store manager had to get involved.
I told them to take all of their crap out of our car, put our crappy AM/FM radio back in, give us a complete refund, and we would never darken their door again.
And we missed a concert that evening because now we had no time to get there.
You’d think that installing a simple car stereo != rocket science.
Showed up to a Smashing Pumpkins concert. According to ticket, doors open at 6:00, show starts at 7:00. I was there at 6, got a front-row seat (the front 2/3 of the facility was standing room.) It was bout 8:30 before the Pumpkins started playing. Glad I was sitting for all that time.
After the show started a bunch of tall people were standing in front of my seat, so I just worked my way up through the crowd and stood for the concert. But I bet the people that stood for 2 hours before the concert were pissed.
Ooh, car repairs–the last time I took my car in, they said it would require half an hour of diagnosis time at $42(approx.) I agreed to pay that–it took them an hour and a half to get around to diagnosing my car.
In the end, the price I paid didn’t feel excessive, and the amount of time from “this is what’s wrong and how we’ll fix it” to “Here’s your fixed car” was shorter than they predicted (and less expensive to repair than predicted). So my overall experience was less horrid than Scarlett’s.
But boy was I annoyed by that hour and a half delay–I’d made an appointment, and I honestly believed that the diagnosing stuff was going to take place immediately (and I really, really, doubt it took half an hour–let alone an hour and a half). Still, if they would just have said “We have to charge you for a minimum of half an hour of dianosis time. It will probably be an hour or more before we get around to your car” I’d have been a lot less antsy.
Yeah, car repairs. I get 2 years of free oil changes with my new car, so I’ll drive 40 miles to get them. I think the math works out. Anyway, I had an appointment for a 9:00 oil change and didn’t get out of there until 10:30. Free is free, but 1.5 hours for an oil change is excessive, I can do it myself in 45 minutes tops.
They’ll also give me a rental for service, but then I’d have to drive back to the city the next day to return the rental and pick up my car.
A few months back, took my car to Wal-Mart (yes, yes, I know…) to get a tire mounted. Easy job, quick job, cheap price and get some shopping done while waiting thereby saving me time and another trip. Great plan, right? I went to the service center, told them what I wanted, they looked me up in the computer, started the paperwork, updated my info, typed up the work order, asked for my keys (the tire being replaced was still on the car) and AFTER all of that said, "It’ll be a two hour wait. we only have one guy working right now. "
HUH? Do you think maybe you could have mentioned that a little earlier like, say, before I stood there giving you info and you typed up the work order? I mean how many people have two and a half hours of Wal-Mart shopping to do?
In retrospect, I should have asked first, but when she just started whipping up the paperwork, for some brainless reason, I assumed it was clear sailing. I was thinking maybe a half hour wait and 15 minutes to do the job, no problem, that would be reasonable.
So I didn’t lose that 2.5 hours, but I came perilously close.
Three hours on Monday. In a training session for a program that I’m almost never going to use. See, I’m the switchboard operator, and this program is mostly to streamline and organize workflow. But I don’t HAVE any workflow. My entire job is answering calls and maintaining paper applications and sending said applications to clients who ask for them. I’m not directly plugged into the other clerical workflow at all, except when it conflicts with my relief for breaks and lunch. So this program is pretty much useless for me.
Didn’t stop them from insisting I sit in on the training. A whole afternoon was gone for nothing…
Sigh. It’s 9:30 on Friday morning California time. I just checked my calendar and find that I’ve already spent 30.5 hours in meetings this week. I would estimate that no more than 10% of that time was actually worthwhile and productive.
Only three more hours of meetings to go (so far) today. :rolleyes:
I went to their show in Raleigh on Sunday. The 8pm concert started around 8:20. I wasn’t mad about it, but I did note that it was unusual. Every other concert I’ve been to started within 5 minutes of what was printed on the ticket. I wasn’t as impressed with the show.