Busy, Busy Week

Good Grief, it has been a busy week around here. We had a regional 2-day staff meeting extravaganza this week and it was all I could do to keep up. We have these meetings about twice a year, and since I work for the “big boss” in this region, I end up working very long hours to make sure everything is put together and comes off without a hitch.

I thought it went well, overall. Hopefully, the other attendees will agree. We are doing some new feedback stuff this time and the responses we’ve received have been interesting. One thing I didn’t like about the event. (I didn’t have anything to do with this part or it never would have happened!) We always take everyone to dinner at a nice restaurant. This time, one of the supervisors decided we needed to have a “team building” activity. Yes, yes, I can hear all of your collective groans. It sounds just like the noise I made when I heard. So, Captain Team Builder (CTB) was put in charge of the activity.

Now, CTB is the biggest procrastinator I have met in my entire life. Nothing he’s involved with ever gets finished on time. Imagine my surprise when I reminded him of his assignment and he looked at me with astonishment. “You mean D was serious when he assigned that to me?” Yes, CTB, yes he was.

This shocking revelation led him to putting together a scavenger hunt (Uggh, groan, NOOOOO!) the night before the event was scheduled. Now, I am perfectly honest when I say, “I hate this shit!” I do. I hate this shit. I don’t think these things are entertaining, fun or useful for anything other than building my hatred toward the organizer. (In this instance, I use the word organizer very, very loosely.)

I was named one of the Team Captains and immediately I was trapped. There was no way out of it now. I would have to participate. The goal was to walk around downtown Salt Lake and take pictures of team members doing extraordinarily stupid and embarrassing things in front of local attractions whilst wearing stupid hats. I imagine that if you like a good scavenger hunt, you’d be pretty pleased with the activity about now. However, let me mention that we were told to wear regular business dress to these meetings and nobody was dressed anywhere near appropriately to be running around town (literally, running) in nice suits, dress pants, heels (Yes HEELS) after dark when it was freezing cold! (FYI...I will never kneel on the ground, form a human pyramid or sit in the middle of an ice rink in a skirt!)Put it all together and it was NOT FUN! My feet still bear the scars of what happened in those shoes.

My week has been long and tiring, and I am happy it is nearing an end. Also, because of all the extra hours I worked on this extravaganza I am way behind on my reading. I was scheduled to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay this week, but it is 600 pages and it won’t be accomplished. I’m trying to make it through Eats, Shoots & Leaves and perhaps, Between A Rock and A Hard Place by Aron Ralston. Aron is the hiker who cut off his own arm after being trapped under a boulder while hiking in Southern Utah.

On a completely unrelated note...Blogger has a fancy new page to add a comment.