@littlek,
littlek wrote:
Yuck. So... why was it such a last-minute invite for you to begin with, Deb?
Well, I knew I was likely to be going up again and we had initially planned it for this coming week, then the important high echelons of the various departments involved got into it and made merry havoc of all our plans.
Since then, everything has been changing from minute to minute, practically.
It's been such a whirlwind that speaking to my boss, which is always difficult, became almost totally impossible. And half the time she hasn't known what's going on, because decisions have been made and changed again and again way above her level, and with poor communication. Thus, what what we and our immediate bosses think is a tight plan at 10.00 pm one night has been overturned by 8.00 am the next morning, and it is moot whether we know about it or not.
I had said I was available this week, but I wanted to be involved in discussions which enabled me to have an input into what I was supposed to be doing, and to be ABSOLUTELY clear what I was doing and that I was going to contribute something solid. This was agreed to.
When I heard nothing by Wednesday, I began to think it wasn't going to happen, and began booking clients in, with the warning that I might need to cancel them.
Thursday afternoon I grabbed my boss in a wrestling hold and demanded to know what was happening!
As is the wont of someone under the amount of pressure she is under, she had forgotten all the "I HAVE to be involved in discussions re my role and agree that I have a reasonable and substantial one or I am not going" bit, and had just recalled "Deb can go the week of May 3rd. Done."
I had heard rumours that I would be training at the school, and she thought I wouldn't be. We clarified, and I was, indeed, expected to do so, under conditions that are untenable, in my view, so I feel professionally quite compromised (not because of ill intent on anyone's part...just lack of understanding of what I do).
I am reluctant to NOT go now (professionally speaking...personally I'd take a few days much needed leave since all my clients and other activities have been cancelled!) because I feel that it is important to a whole bunch of highly stressed people that nothing they have been counting on as dealt with gets cancelled or mucked about with, just in terms of containing people's distress in a ridiculously difficult situation.
But I'll have to wait and see.
Boss is in a worse situation...she was expected to go up last week, and became very ill and couldn't go. Professionally speaking she feels she needs to pull out again, because (it's too complicated to explain why) she feels it will be a waste of her time without the staff person who has just had to pull out because of the death.
But...as she and I are acutely aware...when you are dealing with multiple agencies in a very fraught situation, the only considerations are not just those pertaining to the actual work.
It is also essential to attend to the dynamics.
And, dynamically speaking, it is very bad that she hasn't already been up... in terms of her and our agency's reputation; feelings between agencies and simply the emotional aspect of people doing work that has the potential to cause disaster at any time....(and disaster at MANY levels)...who have been robbed of much of the power to work in the way they believe is the right way, who are having to try to balance and work through many views, and who are exhausted. (Some have been working nearly 24 hours a day for five weeks now.)
I can't tell you guys much about what happens...it's all confidential...just as I can't say where I am going.
I can just moan sometimes in a sort of code! Or be happy in one!