In my documentation of happenings at work, I’ve heretofore neglected to mention the Crazy Hair Lady. Crazy Hair Lady is from the economics dept., and she comes around every now and then to measure the walls and covet our furniture (specifically, white boards). She’s always very polite and isn’t nearly as obnoxious as Geekon. Yet every time she comes in, I have to make a conscious effort not to stare at her, because as you can imagine from her nickname, she is the owner of what is quite possibly the Craziest Hairdo in the Middle West.
A quick, hacky sketch in MS Paint, which isn’t even close to capturing the meticulous insanity of this hair. I am probably one of the last people in the U.S. that does not own a camera phone, and anyway if I did, I don’t think I could operate it smoothly without arousing the ire of the Crazy Hair Lady. And, as noted before, she’s very nice and it would be rude of me to take a picture and post it on the internet for the purposes of mocking.
But civility be damned, this hair needs to be recorded for the ages! It consists of three parts: 1) the feathered, spiky possum-shaped faux-hawk on top, standing by the good graces of God and Aqua Net, 2) the hair underneath it, perfectly straight and drawn back so severely taut that at first sighting, I thought she’d actually shaved the rest of her hair almost to the scalp, and 3) the cascade of tight jeri curls spilling out from the commanding grip of the scrunchie ponytail holder. Never have I seen anyone else display such blended styles. She might be going through an identity crisis, unsure of whether she wants to be punk, Orphan Annie, or severe schoolmarm, and decided to go with all three.
What really gets me the most about this hair is not how stultifyingly unfashionable it is (I can be charitable and consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, this is totally “in” among the holiday-sweater-ladies demographic), or even that it cobbles together two major hair-trocities of the 80’s and early 90’s - what really impresses me is how much effort such a hairdo must require every morning. Unless she sleeps using one of those wacky geisha neck-brace stands every night, each morning she has to carefully fluff and feather the possum hawk, gelling each strand into submission. Then she has to gather the rest of her hair and draw it so taut against her skull that I cringe at the potential pain. And then she has to make sure to align her scrunchie so that the jeri curls are fully segregated from the rest of her head. All of this probably takes hours of loving labor, to achieve such a…well, such a specific result.
Perhaps someone could propose a theory that would involve less complicated fussing to achieve that epic vision, but for now, I’m in awe. Me, I just make sure there isn’t any toothpaste in my hair, brush it, and go. Maybe I could take a cue from Crazy Hair Lady. My image could use a little oomph (and a lot of gel!).
It’s almost December, and almost-almost January of 2007, marking a full year since we found out we’d have to move from our beautiful, well-lit, bay-windowed office into the former bug museum. Looking back at that entry, I note that the move was scheduled take place “by May at the latest.” Ahh, the rosy blush of optimism!
When Belle left and I took over, the move was slated to occur “by mid-October at the latest,” which none of us had taken all that seriously. All one had to do was to go downstairs and look at the gutted out shell of a hallway, wires protruding from the gaping holes in the walls and ceilings like exposed intestines - there was no way anything would be in workable condition within two weeks’ time. Of course, there was always the likely possibility that we’d come to work one day and find our desks and computers gone, unceremoniously dumped into the midst of the chunks of drywall and paint dust of the new locale, and the economics professors and staff happily salivating over our pretty conference room and bay windows (oh, and bus noise, jerks. Deal with it.) But even that decision would require decisive action on the part of some higher-up official, and as anyone who has ever worked in administration knows, that doesn’t come about spontaneously. No, I’ve observed that every decision ever made at the university has to go through a minimum of three people. Your luck depends upon who those three people are, whether they are alert or no, on indefinite medical leave, or whether they actually exist at all, really.
Finally, we got a date for moving, or rather two: either the Monday or Wednesday after Thanksgiving. We were told that the time frame of the move now hinged upon two factors: 1) certification of the rooms for fire code purposes, and 2) installation of the carpets. Apparently the latter task has been contracted out to an external company, and we’d chosen the carpet samples back in August, choosing the least egregious colors and patterns, and thus taking care of our end well in advance (aside: I’m awfully glad to have documented all this somehow!). The former task can only be completed by one man, the bottleneck of operations, a man on indefinite medical leave and who only works Mondays and Tuesdays of alternating weeks. The plan was to see if the Bottleneck would deign to glance at our puny rooms before the break; if he would, then the rest of the move could (definitely, well, possibly) take place sooner rather than later.
Now that we had actual dates, we set about the machinations of moving: packing, changing addresses, ordering new furniture, discarding more of the crap left over from Jodie that we still had laying around, etc. I hired a student worker and immediately assigned him the grunt work of lifting heavy things and putting them into boxes (it pays to be the boss!). When we were about 75% of the way done packing, we got another email - apparently, the carpets were not in, and would not be in on either of those dates.
What was the hold-up? The Bottleneck (as far as I know), miracle of miracles, showed up and bestowed his magical fire code assessment on our rooms. We had done everything they had told us to do, and when they told us to do it, and well in advance of when they expected decisions to be made. The problems occurred with - you guessed it - three people:
1. The crazy math lady next door, who had been furious at my dept. when we had decided to paint over the dreadful salmon color on our walls with offensively inoffensive white. Apparently they are remodeling some rooms, and so the math carpets were to be ordered along with ours. She took her sweet time deciding what she wanted, probably in a toss-up between the art-deco-airport and baby-blue-leopard-print.
2. The purchasing people, in charge of ordering the carpets, sat on the order a little while after that for some reason.
3. Somehow or other, in a miscommunication between the purchasing people and the carpet contractor, our carpet order got lost. Hence, our reward for being timely with our carpet-color decisions.
In addition, the guy that has been communicating with us about the move is going on medical leave this Friday! He will have a replacement, who will apparently oversee things while he is gone. Yet I’m not terribly optimistic about this replacement; my boss mentioned that the only reason he knows anything about why the move is being delayed, is because the guy going on medical leave was nice enough to tell my boss. Yes, in the biggest shock since Britney and K-Fed-Ex’s divorce (or, lately, the rift between the reigning Hep-C Champions), I learned that nothing of substance is ever discussed in these space and planning meetings.
“But, what do you do in these meetings?” I asked, answered with a shrug from my boss.
A phrase, unbidden, comes to mind: “charmingly incompetent.” Yes, that about describes my experience with the good old folks here at my university administration job.