When is a crisis a crisis?
As M. de Ours Nus is aware I've been battling a few mini-crises in the last couple of weeks.
- My new iphone broke and I was informed it would take 4-6 weeks to fix.
- My electricity was turned off last week because after 2.5 months my service provider had not connected my account.
- One of my stitched projects came out a bit bigger than anticipated and the initial postage/courier quote was over $200.00
- Was, thanks to an Apple retail store, fixed within 15 minutes the next day I had off work.
- Was, thanks to the Energy and Water Ombudsman's office, reconnected at 8:30pm the next night.
- Was, thanks to some advice from Australian Air Express, posted for $11.50.
So my crises have caused a slight panic and many many hours on the telephone getting the right advice and all is now well. I kinda felt a bit silly about getting overwrought by such issues that were ultimately, resolved in a short period of time and quite to my satisfaction.
Then I get to work today. We have a whole of unit afternoon tea scheduled for this afternoon. We meet, the manager tells us we did good, we eat. Everyone brings a plate.
The place is in an uproar! Person X bought their food instead of making it! Persons P & Q both bought chocolate cakes !!! This should have been planned better - there should have been a spreadsheet !!!!!
Huh? I work on the assumption everyone brings what they themselves want to eat. So if all 30 people turn up with packets of Tim Tams then I assume every one of those 30 people want to eat Tim Tams .... How? Why is this a crisis?
Do I need to give my section more work to do? Less work? Are they that overwrought with "Getting it RIGHT for Christmas (tm)"?
Hmmm - in the spirit of reducing overwroughtness this season I will no longer fret about Hector II the Zombie Christmas Tree.
Hector didn't make the transition interstate too well and most of his needles died. He's been re-potted and fed fertilizer etc and he's starting to get new shoots. Frankly he looks ghastly! This is the very best picture I could take of him - all the other pics were worse.
But I'm not going to stress. I'm not going to fret and compromise my principles and buy a cut tree. Instead, on Christmas Eve I will bring Hector inside and pretty him up as best I can and laugh with my Christmas Day companions on how appropriate it is for us to be sharing a Zombie Christmas Tree.
I wonder if we could get Jonathan Coulton to write a song: Oh Zombie Tree, Oh Zombie Tree ...