On "assistance"...

I'm in Pittsburgh. I wrote a blog from this very same hotel when I was here for the very same event last year. Aw.. blog anniversary with The Westin.

Anyway, I arrived at my hotel at 5 pm. Of course, I should have arrived at 4:30, but my inherited "assistant" put the wrong hotel address on my itinerary and I, of course, plugged that address into my GPS when I left work. See, the thing about my assistant is, well, she was kind of shuffled around between offices in our department and, well, she's not very bright, and, well, not all that pleasant at times. Prior to my inheritance of her, we were encouraged to give her projects to keep her from reading Harry Potter at her desk, but nothing "too complicated". Directions had to be very clear. Scripts provided. The training and development of the training often took way more time than the task itself. And it somehow ended up messed up just the same.

So this is the second itinerary I've given her to put together and the second one she messed up. The first time she had me flying out of the wrong airport. Thankfully, I found that one in advance, pointed it out, and moved on, instead of showing up at National for my flight out of Dulles.

This time I didn't catch the error. Thankfully, I had my hotel confirmation printed out and, of course, my GPS, whose recalculation "skills" were put to the test. Had I not had these things, I would have been woefully screwed. It took an additional 30 minutes to get to the correct address through a variety of not so nice neighborhoods. My GPS is my God.

Since my arrival, I have worked the entire time. I have worked an entire work day since arriving at the hotel this evening. Granted, my job doesn't entail traditional hours, and I don't expect it, but I arrived at my office at 7:45 am, worked until 12:45 pm (including 2 meetings), drove 4 hours, and worked another 7.

In that time, I have stared at and endlessly modified a complicated Excel spreadsheet and sent an e-mail to my assistant trying to balance "hey you messed up" with "but really it's ok!", so not to send her into an emotional fit while I'm away. Oh yah, that's the other thing, all those other times she messed up before I inherited her? Management thought it best not to correct her errors and just never mentioned it to her when she made a mistake. Actually, maybe it's better to miss the breakdown.

I've also been managing an unrelated swarm of confusing e-mails back and forth, but a few in particular that were completely poison pen from a colleague I unintentionally pissed off in a major way. Like, floored, completely unknowing, completely unintentional, "holy crap my bad!" type of stuff.

All it is, really, is karma coming round for some emotional poison pen stuff I sent out in my personal life early this week that I've only managed to partially receive forgiveness for. Still, as old as I feel sometimes, I just can't help but feel like I am WAY too young to deal with so much mess. Yes, I'm the anti-Danny Glover.

So I'm looking for some real assistance. Assistance with perspective, assistance with instruction, assistance on how to play better in each of my respective sandboxes - both personal and professional.

If only my GPS could guide me.