The Stress Hormones Ate my Baby!

One of the few things that I love about my job is the seasons. During the academic year it's pretty frantic, and then come finals and I don't have to study for them which makes them the most magical time of the year!

And then once the finals are over the professional types sort of scatter so I get paid to sit around and read all day. I also get more editing and manuscript work during the summer because of the whole not having to deal with students thing.

Yesterday was not one of those fun days.

I have been helping one of my favorite professional types to get this reimbursement for a conference he went to back in March that was sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh and some other people. So they sent the initial reimbursement but it was short. $550 short!!! Like he's not going to notice! So we've been calling and emailing and calling and faxing back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. For a month, to try to get results.

To no avail.

So, yesterday comes and this professional type comes to me with the latest installment of this drama and tells me that if U Pitt isn't going to reimburse him then he needs to file paperwork here from a very specific account. An account that will be closing...TODAY. So would I please hurry up and get a definite answer from these people. TODAY.

So I call our contact at U Pitt and attempt to get her to call the other people to find out if there WILL be a reimbursement happening from their end and what do I get? APATHY.

Oh, Fate, you do have a sense of Irony.

So I relay this information to the professional type and he tells me, "M******, just get nasty with them! Be bitchy! Nothing else has worked!"

Let me get this straight. I'm being TOLD to lose my temper?

So I go to my supervisor and explain that the conversation she may overhear from my cubical has been sanctioned and in fact, ordered up by one of these professional types. (My annual review is next week and I don't want to get screwed because a professional type TOLD me to do something and I did it!)

I call the woman at the other organization and realize that I can't lose my temper on command. I know. So much for pent up pregnancy rage, huh? So I tell her calmly and directly that if she can't answer this simple question then we will find someone at her organization who can.

1 hour later I got this lovely email stating that my professional type would in fact be reimbursed post haste. Lovely!

In the midst of all of this I learned that our baby registries were all messed up and my lovely sister in law (who is planning the Savannah shower) was trying to alert me to this so that I could fix it before people started running into problems.

I was stressed to the point of being all sweaty, people. It was gross.

But in the end, the registries have been fixed and the literal check is in the mail. Unfortunately, I did such a good job getting an answer from those people that the same professional type gave me another one to battle with today. Funtastic!

On the upside, today is a big Retreat for the professional types so I will get to have one of those lovely quiet days where no one asks me to do anything petty or silly or lame. YAY for me! Happy Thursday.