Work It

It's only been a month and a half since I started my new gig, and I'm wondering what I got myself into.

First of all, after my trip there for the "interview" (it was basically just to meet everyone; they'd interviewed two other people to fulfill the HR requirement), I tweeted something about working from home.  A few weeks later, I got a vague email from my friend (the one who hooked me up with the job), asking for a good time to call me.  It turns out HR must have done a search and found my account, because they threw up some type of warning, so I was warned not only to avoid social media (or at least make my posts as private as possible), but that the university also screens everyone's email!! Anything that goes through their servers!!  And apparently the dept. I work for had been audited for something before so they are under particular scrutiny.

So it's been very hectic since my start.  The job was "sold" to me as doing scheduling whenever I wanted.  NOT TRUE.  I feel like I'm checking email early in the morning till the evening.  I'm in charge of calendaring as well as booking/researching travel options, the latter which are very nerve-wracking.  For example, the director is to go to the Persian gulf next month, with three cities involved, but I've had to research different departure dates, return dates, extra cities, etc.  That has been such a clusterfuck of a project, that the Persian gulf is no longer on my bucket list.

I went down for a day and a half this past week to see the center in action.  I keep getting warned that the director is just like a toddler:  "GIMME GIMME NO I WANT IT THIS WAY NOW!"  (He's only 42.  But still.) Which explains the ludicrous requests for researching bizarre flight options.  And the fact that he asked whether my availability 24/7 would be any possibility at all.  (Um, NO.  I'm only supposed to be 60% time!!)  Though I must admit that being back in the international cooperation arena feels nice.  I'm privy to funny anecdotes regarding foreign diplomats, and former US officials.  Plus I get to hear cool accents and talk to staff at the UN missions.  (Though when I called the Aussies, the staffer and I started talking at the same time and he said, "whoa! I think we've got a bad connection...I totally just heard another person talking on the line..."  IT WAS ME.)

My friend asked a few weeks ago to get some options for a CA trip, but I neglected to forward them, so by last week the prices had gone up.  OOPS.  Director had to use miles to book the trip on his own.  I should have known better, but I didn't ask about hotels until yesterday.  Turns out his preferred hotel, just minutes from The Farm, is sold out for some event, so the one that my contact booked him in is about 15 minutes away.  I put the confirmation number on his calendar, and was going to email and explain, along with other updates.  But I thought, it's the weekend, I'll do it Sunday night.  Well, I just noticed I had some new mail on my Gmail (which I'd been using till my office address was set up), and there were 3 messages saying how annoyed he was, that's not his first choice, we shouldn't be booking on short notice, he'll stay in SF instead, blah blah blah...all totally valid.

Juggling all this so far has been pretty hectic.  My big chunks of time are M/W/F mornings when little AC is at school; otherwise, I feel bad because she's even started asking "Mama, are you done?"

Stay tuned.  Not sure how much longer I'll last.  I've only done scheduling once before, and it was only for a year, 25% time.  I wanna do what I'm good at!!  :(