Tragi-Doodle

My boss has been giving me more responsibility at work. This includes projects and things that I wasn't responsible for my first couple months. Generally these are self-run activities - compiling reports, spreadsheets, creating presentations, etc. Overall I've really enjoyed working on this stuff - it's a nice break from the doc and credential review I spend most of my time doing.

 

One project I didn't like so much was organizing a joint department meeting. I work with the business school and we do a lot of joint programs with other departments. Most of this is pretty easily run because other departments use our in-house application system, so we just share the applications and make decisions based on the documents submitted for one application.

 

Enter School X and their joint degree. This involves different parts of the application, so we don't share the decision system. This makes my life a living nightmare. It means that we have like 3 applications with different numbers that have to be consolidated in the end. It causes trouble with admission letter printing, visa documentation, and registration for classes. It's the hydra monster of my life. Get the application in and then twenty new problems pop up because NOTHING is being done correctly. Yay!

 

Well, after a few months of this, the admission season ended and we lost a bunch of applicants because it took us 1000 years to process an application correctly. Oops! We tried!

 

I made it a top priority to get this system consolidated because every time these apps came through it knocked out a 3 hour chunk of my day making phone calls, sending emails, scanning documents, etc.

 

But summer was nigh and my boss told me it would be a good time to organize the meeting. Just like I had done with other departments, I created a Doodle poll.

 

A Doodle poll is very simple. It lists dates and times and you check mark which times you are available! Like... hypothetically, say I sent you a Doodle poll with this Friday on it. It would have four boxes for 9, 10, 11, and 12. You can PICK what time you're free! Then other people do it! Then you KNOW when to have a meeting! It takes roughly 2 minutes out of your day and helps organize everything.

 

Well, I created a Doodle for the joint meeting. I thought there were only four of us that needed to be there, but lo and behold, it turned into this big fustercluck of 8 people, who all have to be present to figure out what the eff is going on with these applications.

 

So, I send the Doodle. Within minutes I get 10 messages of people commenting and complaining because the times don't work. So I adjust the times. Then adjust again. Then more complaining. Then another adjustment.

 

Finally, it's already mid-July when I'm trying to schedule this meeting. I send out the email and wait.

 

And Wait.

 

And Wait.

 

And Wait.

 

Every Wednesday for three weeks I re-sent the Doodle out and reminded everyone passive aggressively that they need to take the EFFING poll.

 

"Hey Guys! It's Tedd! This is just a friendly reminder that we need to find a time to meet. Please take the poll so we can match up availability!"

 

"Hey Team! Another friendly reminder that we need to get a jump on these joint applications! Please put your availability on the Doodle poll!"

 

By the third one, I wanted to write:

 

"Listen, you bunch of lazy turd hats. I need you to go in, click your index finger a few times and tell me when you're available. This isn't rocket science, and it's no wonder this is messed up because y'all can't figure out how to take a FRICKIN" poll. XOXO Tedd"

 

But instead it read something like this: "Hey All! If you can, please fill out the Doodle poll so we can get a jump on these applications!"

 

I told my boss what was going on and she did send an email that read something like, "We need to get this done. Fill out the poll."

 

About the same time that went out, I got an email from this lady in School X. She said, "Tedd, we are all available on Wednesday at 10 for a meeting.

My boss's email and this ladies email were caught in cyberspace, so that they were both delivered at the same time.

I started to write an email telling everyone what time the meeting was, just as I get another email from the lady responding to Maya's email.

Maya, I have told Tedd MULTIPLE times that we are available on Wednesday at 10.

This is when Tedd's hand goes up in the air with a,"Bitch, please" expression on his face. It also, ironically, was the time when I started getting emails from Doodle.

Chuck has taken the Doodle poll.

Chuck has altered his Doodle results.

Chuck has changed his Doodle results.

Chuck works for School X. And despite the fact that I had (evidently?) been told multiple times about their availability, Chuck was going like gangbusters, clicking and unclicking boxes in the poll.

So I log into the poll and, I decide to be my caddy gay self.

I write an email to the woman who had called me out in front of my boss and said,

Hey! You had told me 10 on Wednesday, but it looks like Chuck isn't available at all on Wednesday. Is he not participating?

About 10 seconds later I get a phone call.

"Tedd, this is School X, we think this would be best to do over the phone."

"Sure thing!" (Overly nice, Tedd exclaims!)

"It looks like there was an error and none of us are available on Wednesday at 10."

An error? An error from the heavens that somehow changed your availability in 10 minutes? Are you sure you meant, "I screwed up, Tedd. Sorry, we can't do Wednesday.'

"The only time we can all get together," she continued, "Is Friday at 1."

"Sure thing!" 

"Phew, okay. I'm glad this was settled." She is about to hang up but hesitates. "You know," she goes on, "I just wish there was a way to sync our schedules so we all knew if we could go to the meeting or not."

Click. The phone is dead.

You wish....you...what?...you?...wh-... You wish there was a thing, like a POLL, where we could all put our AVAILABILITY DOWN?!! I literally banged the phone on my desk and immediately went into my coworkers office.

"Annie," I said, "You have got to hear about the Doodle Debacle." 

The Craigslist Strangler

Recently I got this online dating app for my phone. My phone is a C-level cell phone that is so old it may have been used as a prop in the Great Gatsby movie. Needless to say it struggled to support the app that has pictures and messaging. I had started chatting with this one guy and we went back and forth a bit. I had to shut down the app because my phone kept crashing, but the guy said he wanted to keep in touch, so I gave him my email. Roughly 10 messages later I proposed we meet and he never responded again.

Gay T Swift, ladies and gentleman. Cue guitar chords for the new hit, "Online D8er H8er."

The funny part is, that the night before the day that I had asked him to meet, my mind, in a refusal to accept this rejection, created this elaborate fantasy dream sequence. It started with me dreaming that I got a message from the guy with a girl CC'd on it. I asked my friend why he would do this and she was like, "Well, we all have to take precautions with the Craigslist Strangler out there..." She then went into gruesome detail about how the Strangler meets people online, asks them to meet, then draw and quarters them, and sets their head on a pike in a public place. According to my dream friend, all the meetings take place in broad daylight. Most of this gruesome detail was probably due to the fact that I read about the public murder of the Brazilian soccer referee... If you haven't seen this story, and enjoy morbid non-fiction, I would heartily suggest looking it up. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2013/07/07/soccer-referee-beheaded-after-stabbing-player-to-death-in-brazil/)

There are a number of dream-problems with this, like A) How this guys is able to draw and quarter someone in daylight in a public place? and B) Why he is called a Strangler in the first place when he clearly doesn't strangle at all?

This also marked the first time I woke up. A lot of rational feelings flooded me in my half-awake state, like how hurt I was that this guy thought I was a killer who operated on Craigslist, and also, at this point we had become Facebook friends, so I had questioned how he could see my Facebook profile and think "murderer." 

Well, I go back to sleep and dream that I receive another message from the guy - no CC this time - and he asks me to meet him at 1 p.m. at the local park. I immediately start freaking out because meeting in broad daylight in a park is just how the Strangler picks his victims. I confer with my dream-friend, who is immediately suspicious about this sudden change, and suggests that the CC email was a front to make me think that he thought that I was the Strangler, when in reality, HE was the Strangler. 

I woke up a second time in a panic that I was going to be murdered in the park and also pondered whether I should, in fact, risk a horribly gruesome and public death in order to meet a guy that I thought was really cute.

Sadly, there was no follow up dream. My final dream of the night saw me as the personal assistant to a famous Cat named Ginger. I was upset because Ginger was being a diva and should know better after being a well-established SAG cat actor.

I wish any of this was fiction, but it all came up in dreamland. And yes, this was written at 8 a.m. on a Sunday in case I would forget any of these bizarre details.

Bacon

I started using this new dating service called Coffee Meets Bagel. You basically get shown a profile and then if you both click "like" then you get connected in an open text communication, where you can trade info and set up a date.

Well, I liked this guy and we started talking. 

I think I should preface this with the fact that certain sects of gay men are purdy shallow. Like, your personality can be non-existent to bland, but if you have a six-pack and some on-hand shirtless pics, you can probably at least get to date #3 with some people. Just like the Strangler from above, this Coffee/Bagel guy asked to share my Facebook information so that they could see more pics and... He had lots of shirtless selfies and insanely groomed eyebrows, so I think pictures of me with my mouth open completely clothed, were not especially impressive.

Anyhoo, before Coffee/Bagel guy and I became Facebook friends, he had asked for more pictures, most likely because he didn't think I was attractive enough and wanted to vet me with more pics. So, I acquiesced and sent him a picture of my face only.

I went to the gym and came back and in response to my picture, I got the following:

"I love bacon :)"

Eerrrrmmm what? I immediately call one of my besties and start asking questions.

"Is bacon a gay thing? Like... Is it...?"

"Are you sunburnt?" my friend, Ryan, asked.

"Not really... I mean my skin is kind of pink."

Then the guy wasn't from the US, so I thought it was maybe an international slang term for white people? Like, pork is the other white meat...so...?

I almost texted one of my friends with family abroad to be like, "If you saw a white guy walking around... Would you ever call him bacon?"

The guy and I text back and forth a few more times before it finally comes out that he never got the picture I sent.

"You sent pics?"

"Uhhh... Why'd you say I love bacon?"

"Because it was in your profile."

That's when I remembered that in my profile, I specifically say that I won't date a guy that will not eat bacon. 

I feel that there is no need to even say how this played out, because all my dating stories end the same:

We scheduled a date.

30 minutes before he canceled.

This is fine because I now make plans during my dates with the assumption that there won't be a date. This is exactly what happened, I ended up meeting a group of friends at another bar.

"Bacon!" Ryan called across the bar, "no date?"

"Nope," I said. "Facebook got me again."

I think it's safe to say that anyone who I meet, who first asks for more pictures is a waste of time. 

"Can we be Facebook friends? I want to see more pics ;)"

My response will now be:

"I'll just route out the rest of this exchange for us. I friend you. You accept. You look at the pics. You're unimpressed. You don't want to seem shallow, so you'll keep talking to me. We set up a date. 30 minutes before the date an emergency will come up and you will cancel. We will never speak again. Approximately 3 days after our last exchange, I will defriend you. Let's cut out the middle man. XOXO."

Evangelical Magnet

For some reason lots of evangelical Christians hang out on the campus of the university I work for. How do I know? 

Because they ALL talk to me.

On my way into the office at 8:30 am a guy and girl team stopped me.

Them: "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?"

Me: "Yes...but it's 8 am..."

I actually classify myself as Christian, but my belief system is based on liberal interpretations of the Bible and in looking at general Christian themes rather than picking on the few things that tend to cause division, like abortion and (obviously) homosexuality.

At one point (this time in the cafeteria) this team of 3 evangelical boys, with multiple stages of hip, trendy, evangie beard growth, accosted me.

Evangies: "Do you have time for a survey?"

Me: "Sure."

Evangies: "Cool. Question #1: Should you die tonight, what would be your greatest regret?"

Me: "That's pretty heavy..."

The guys were nice, but I tend to recoil and be terrified of anyone who believes in God and looks like they may play the guitar. I grew up in a church with people like this, who were nice to everyone, but then wanted to send gays and single, pregnant mothers to hell. So, I started sweating and just prayed that it would end quickly.

I didn't want to engage these 19 year old kids in religious debate, because I would destroy them, and oddly enough, it is my Christian upbringing, which makes me recoil at the thought of denouncing the beliefs of wide-eyed, enthusiastic Christians with guitar-playing skills.

Evangies: "You should join us at church sometime."

Me: "Thanks for the invite, but I choose churches selectively. I've been burned before."

Evangies: "That's too bad, man. Give our church a chance."

The church they were inviting me to is this super, mega church in downtown Chicago, one which has literally ostracized and cast out a number of my gay friends. At this point in my life, I find it odd when people don't immediately peg me as gay. I mean, since I was 14 I have been getting mocked for it at some level or another, so it seems like it should just be OBVIOUS.

But these kids didn't pick up on it, so I just let it go. 

Me: "Maybe I'll go sometime..."

Some of my friends suggested that I should have laid into them about their beliefs and what the church has done, but really, it's not these kids. They're doing the best they can and I don't really want to yell at them - doing so is the equivalent of screaming at a customer service representative when your cable goes out. So I was polite and went on my way. If I see any of the playing the guitar on the quad, however, it will be all out war.