This week, my employer has been the "host organization" for our industry's largest annual professional conference. While it's been great to actually get to attend one of these events (tickets are upwards of $700 for 3 days, plus travel, meals, etc., so it isn't something I'd be able to attend if it weren't happening in our city and if we weren't hosting), it's been a little stressful.
I spent the full day Wednesday at the conference site, walking around, checking out the vendors, making sure my intern was set up with our volunteer coordinator, etc. Nothing too crazy. Well, according to my pedometer, I walked over 3 miles inside. That's kind of crazy.
Yesterday, though... I needed to be there by 11am for a seminar. Naturally, I received a panicky email from a coworker about needing to finalize some foreign transfers. I was promised they'd be ready for review by 8am, 8:30 at the latest.
So, stupid me, I arrive at the office for 8am and... wait... and... wait... and... wait.
Naturally they weren't ready until 9:45am. Yeah. At least I was able to use the lag time in between to finalize a few reports for my boss, so I wasn't just sitting around. Apparently the traffic gods were on my side because I managed to get over to the convention center (about 4 or 5 miles away) and find parking (not always a "given") in about 25 minutes. Whoo-hoo! I then spent the rest of the day attending seminars and getting to know people.
Then I get home, which is when I remembered that Friday (today) is the last day of school and that DD#4 probably needed a thank you gift and note for her teacher. So, we ran out, bought a box of gourmet chocolates (her teacher is a HUGE choco-holic), treated ourselves to ice cream for dessert, went back home, made a card (and DD#4 included a very nice letter of appreciation), and I was ready to crash.
About 8pm, I remembered DD#3 is supposed to attend a Science Olympiad team dinner Friday (today) and she promised to bring brownies. Of course, I remembered that DH promised that he would make them with her after school and, well, that totally didn't happen. So, last night, when I should have been preparing for the last day of conference today, I baked 2 batches of homemade brownies. And made a pitcher of homemade lemonade because DD#4 asked for some. (I mean, at this point, why not? It's not like I was getting to do anything for myself, right? lol)
Today, though... today was supposed to be the "easy" day. I needed to be at conference (final day) at 8:45am. But DD#2 needed to be dropped off for work on my way. Okay, not too bad, as I wasn't running too late. Hit a bit of traffic. Not too bad, it gave me a chance to mentally prepare (today's seminar was totally about my field of work and promised to be good.) I get into the convention center about 20 minutes early and the security guard wants to talk about how awesome this event has been and how much he loves my employer organization. Nice to hear but I need to get to session, dude, please wrap it up. (My mom raised me to be too polite to just cut him off.) Finally I manage to get to the conference room exactly on time. Whoo-hoo! Then I spent the next hour and a half, listening to the presented proceed to rip apart the major parts of my job. I mean, she literally said that it's a no longer necessary part of finance for non-profits and that it's a waste of time and money. WTF?!? I didn't walk out because, well, I was hoping she was going to change her tone a bit. But nope. Just more talk about how it's a totally outdated model. (Which it isn't, BTW. In fact, it's pretty common at all levels of non-profit organizations.)
I finished up that seminar and came back to the office. After filling in my boss with the update that our work is for nothing (and her having the same WTF reaction I did), I decided that today was not going to be my most productive day and that I should plan on just cleaning up my office, answering emails for the past week, and that's about it.
In the meantime, to the seminar presenter who so thoroughly crapped on my work for the past (almost) 5 years... bite me. My particular area is something that is very much needed, it's not a waste of resources to allocate funds to this area, and we (actually accountants and finance personnel) probably know it better than a consultant who's never worked in our field.
Oh, and her calling fundraising "sales just tarted up with cheap lipstick and perfume" generated a ton of laughs from our philanthropy department. I think they dislike her almost as much as I do.
There... rant off.
Have a good rest of Friday, everyone!
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