...The most terrifying words you can say to someone when they already know things aren't going well. They are also a very powerful tool when dealing with a sticky situation that should have been straight forward. They are also words that I'm usually very reluctant to use. I don't like conflict and using these words means I'm in a conflict. They also tend to make the situation with the first person worse - even as they take the situation out of that person's hands.
I have 2 examples of how these words have gotten me what I've needed today. The first was a work situation. My manager was trying to convince another clinic to quit playing games and schedule an appointment for our client. She started this project on Wednesday. Then they told her she would have to "call back on friday". So this morning she called them back and was told that they still couldn't make the appointment because the client didn't have a referral (yes she did - they'd checked that part on Wednesday). She got so frustrated by this that she handed me the phone and went for a short walk. I got the same answers for a while, until I started asking to speak to a manager, then I was told that the manager wasn't available right then, but they would get the referal and get back to me this afternoon.
This afternoon came and they didn't call back. So being the stubborn person that I am, I called again. This time they said I couldn't make an appointment because they were all booked up and I'd have to call again on Thursday. I said that wasn't acceptable, because I'd done everything they'd told me to do and I needed to make this appointment. "Not my problem" they said. Bad choice on their part. I insisted on speaking to a manger right then and they hung up on me. I called back and immediately insisted on speaking to a manager. They tried to argue and explain, but I kept on insisting that I needed to speak with the manager. Finally they put me through to her office and 2 minutes later I had the appointment I needed and a promice that she would speak to the staff about their behavior.
The second example is for a my social life. A couple weeks ago, I had a bad experience at one of our local Pubs. I talked to the manager then, but didn't get a satisfying result. So I thought about it and decided to write a letter. Today that same manager called me back, much more appologetic and promiced to make changes to see that our problems didn't happen again. I felt that she was being quite sincere and thanked her for getting back to me. We'll have to see if things do change in the future, but I feel much better about going back there now.
We're done - finally. We took the tape down last night and we are done. With the bathroom that is.
A little over a month ago, Sweetie and I decided that we'd had enough of the lousy pastel wall paper in the bathroom and tore it down. We figure it would be maybe a 2 weekend project, take the wall paper down and prep the walls in one weekend and paint it all the next.
Yea right.
It took us about an hour to take down the wall paper, and two weeks to get the glue off the wall. In the process we discovered that we were going to need to do more than expected to prep the walls - namely re-spacle the whole thing, not just the small dings we took when scraping the glue. This gave us the bright idea that now would be a good time to rewire the lights and fan to run on seperate switches - which turned into a much bigger project than expected due to some strange finds behind the wall and ended with a less than ideal wiring route, but that's the one that Sweetie could pull off. It works, it's safe, it'll just be a bit difficult for the people to figure out if they want to make any other changes.
By the time we managed to get to the part where we put up the tape and started painting schedules came round to hit us hard. I was about to go back to school, and we both wanted to do more with our Tai Chi classes in preperation for the Chinese New Year. But little bit by little bit we managed to get primer and then paint up on the wall. Last night we finally got to the part where we added the gold highlights and took down the tape.
It looks wonderful. It's got the rich colors that I love and metalic glaze to brighten things up. It's all shiny and lovely and we finally have mirrors over the sink again. Now we just need to replace all the light bulbs that went out during this process and find a better towel bar and we'll be done.
I'm so happy that it's finished. It's a pain to live in half done remodeling.
Now, onto the living room - we're going to put in hardwood floors.
I lucked out this semester. I have 3 classes but only had to buy 2 books. Especially considering that school books have this nasty tendency to be not cheep (and most of them are down right expensive).
I have some good teachers it seems. One teacher even told us that she chose one of the books for her class specifically because she knew that most of us would have bought it for a different class. Another teacher decided that since we were in Advanced ASL reading a book in English didn't really make a lot of sense - so we have 25 hours of community service instead. The last teacher also noticed the irony of reading English texts for an ASL class - but she still made us buy one book - a relatively cheep text of fingerspelling exercizes.
All in all, my first week of school has gone fairly well. I found all my class rooms without any problems. I haven't had too much trouble finding a place to park, and I've found friends in all of my classes. I'm also already ahead on homework - because I misread the sylabus and did homework due next tuesday right after tuesday's class. I could hope to keep that up, but it's not likely.
So now, I have just 14 weeks to teach my co-workers my new schedule. I wonder if I'll succede this semester.