It's not what you think. I'm not really slacking.
Well, I am, but it's not my fault. I was forced into it, pathetically enough.
Our office is moving, and through a complete and fucked-up lack of planning on the principals' parts, we don't have an office space this week. In fact, we may not have an office space next week, either.
Our crap is packed up in boxes in a storage room, which is doubling as a sad little workspace for the three marketing people as they desperately try to issue an RFQ. Despite the fact that they have no e-mail access. Or phones.
Dude (my uber-clever pseudo for Principal #1) told everyone to basically take the week off. That would be great, except that I kind of can't. I currently have a project in construction, and it's of the sort (a renovation with an unrealistic schedule) that has anywhere from one to twenty Crises-a-Day. I often have to answer RFIs and turn around submittals the same damn day they're given to me, because it's for something the contractor is mobilized to begin the same day or day following.
This project was already several months behind
schedule when I got on it last October (natch). I tried, in futility, to
tell the Principals that this project was not going to be done by
the Owner's specified date of the following August. The Substantial
Completion date is now set at September 3rd. There's no way
in hell we're making September 3rd, either. But I'm not wasting my time
trying to tell anyone that, this time. I'm just keeping it to myself,
because they won't listen anyway.
In order to give the (%$@*^!&) contractor this quick turnaround, I really really really need access to AutoCAD, the project's files, my contacts, the intarweb, Adobe Pro, Excel, and a courier service. I thought I could manage most of what I needed to accomplish by piecing together a "mobile office" with a flash drive, my home computer, a 30-day trial download of AutoCAD, and driving things to the consultants my damn self. I'm sure you can see where this is going- I was grossly incorrect in my assumption.
I don't have a printer, ever since an incident, ironically, stemming from me trying to print something for work, killed it. No problem, I thought, I'll just print to pdf. Nope. I didn't have the pen table files, so if I tried to print from AutoCAD to pdf, it would be all the crazy colors of the layers.
I don't have Excel on my home computer, so I can't even open the RFIs from the contractor, because they're in Excel format.
I can't do anything design-related, because I'm not authorized to select even a paint color for the door frame to a toilet without Dude's approval. He's been "unavailable" because of the build-out of the new office space. He's been doing very important stuff- for example, he blew me off all day Monday because he was picking out carpet. Even though I've been trying to get him to sit the hell down and pick flooring for my project, which has lead time issues, for months. (Going back to the digression, this is part of why the damn thing was/is so behind schedule.)
My home internet connection is notoriously sketchy, and about the third time it went out yesterday, it resulted in me having a major meltdown of the FUCK IT ALL TO HELL variety. I decided I'm just not going to try so hard to work, when my employer can't even provide me a fucking workplace.
So I'm at the coffee shop, sponging off their free Wi-Fi. And I may go get a massage now. The project, the contractor, the consultants, and Dude can all just go fuck themselves. Tomorrow I'm on vacation until the 7th.
Except for when I'm picking up fabric sample FedEx's from my front doorstep in my PJs.
1 comment:
Glad your back, I came to this blog late but it's hilarious.
I also used to be a cadmonkey, but now they call me a project designer.
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