The Schedule

I would like to introduce you to my staff, both those that work for me and those whom I work for. I will do this by telling you about their activities throughout the week. I'm thinking I will do a weekly post, chronicling their shenanigans for that week. I will change the names to protect the guilty and myself from repercussions.

In my current role, I am in charge of food services at the South Campus of a large post secondary educational institution about an hour outside of Toronto.

The ridiculous things that happen are often stranger than fiction and I feel like I need an outlet, otherwise I might go nuts. So, I hope you get some entertainment out of this, and understand that this is my outlet for sanity.

In the middle of the summer, I got a new boss. While I feel I have a much better relationship with my new boss, he does provide me with some entertaining and frustrating moments. Let's call my new boss Bruce. As we are gearing up for the start of the school year, Bruce asks me to email him a copy of my staff schedule. This is a completely normal and expected request, and of course I have said schedule and send it along to Bruce. Fast forward a week, I get a similar email, Bruce explains he has had difficulty accessing his email and needs me to send him the schedule again because the previous email is buried in his inbox. While I think this story sounds a bit flimsy, the guy is new and he is still getting acclimated, so I send along the schedule.

Another week goes buy, and I receive another email "Trying to get a handle on staffing needs, can you send me a copy of your staff schedule for the fall semester." Now my WTF radar is going off. My boss works at the North Campus, the North Campus is the main Campus and there is another food services manager who works there. Anna is my counterpart at the North Campus, and she sent me an email a few days before that read like this, "Bruce is trying to understand our staffing needs, could you send me a copy of your schedule so I can talk to him about our staffing needs." Of course I sent the schedule, and now two days later Bruce is asking me for the same schedule. By this time, I'm getting a bit frustrated and it's also become somewhat amusing, but wait ... there is more to this story ...

The following week, the three of us have a meeting to discuss staffing needs. When I sit down to this meeting, Bruce looks at my and asks if I have a copy of my schedule. It takes a significant amount of effort, but, I keep a straight face, and pull out a copy of the schedule because I actually kind of thought that might happen. As we are talking it becomes clear that Bruce has no idea what my staffing needs are. Fortunately, by the end of the meeting he appears to understand my needs.

We have had some difficulty filing the grill position (that's a story for a later day) and the Pizza position (another story there). The individual we initially hired for Pizza walked out during her first shift. Fast forward to today and I receive the following email: "If you had a full time Pizza person, what would their schedule be?"

To be continued ...