Lacadaisical

I thought I was one of the most lacadaisical people in the building, but, alas...someone has bested me.

 

I'm not surprised that it's Security Guard; he who is soft-spoken and will not get up to help hold the door open for you when you are plainly overburdened with Panera boxes unless you ask him to. Not that it's his job to do so; it would just be nice. Know what I mean?

 

One of my people has some prospects in and I had to order lunch for them. No biggie. He did not say it, but I am sure he wanted everything timed just right. This guy can act a little putrid sometimes, but he is kind of a pleasure to work for because he is very exact. He knows just what he wants and he does indeed communicate it well.

 

Soooo...I ordered lunch to be delivered just when I needed it here. The time came and went...I waited 7 minutes and then called the vendor, a nice little Bistro nearby our building. We order from them all the time and they are awesome...and always punctual.

 

The vendor stated that they had indeed dropped off the goodies right on time and the delivery person (who happens to be the owner) was already back.

 

Now, I have had catering orders not show up before. Panera lost 2 lunch orders one day and one of the Directors was livid. He is a gentleman though, so he did not take it out on me; he knew whose fault it was. I about shat myself when it happened because it made me look mui bad, no matter who was guilty of the snafu.

 

Pardon me while we take a dogleg into some office philosophy territory...whether it's the vendor's fault or not, Supervisor, who is Type A all the way, always finds something I could have done differently. This is the only thing about her that I find irritating. Whether it's unreasonably forcing a restaurant to fax me a confirmation of the order (yeah, like that's going to make any difference when the incompetent on the other end of the phone loses the order anyway), or whatever it is, there's always something. Basically, it's always better to avoid the 'taint of error, whether it be taint from a mistake that you yourself ro someone else made. You just don't want to be near it. So much stuff in an office like this is based on perception that proximity equals complicity in the eyes of many.

 

Having learned that the owner had delivered the food and been back at the restaurant for 10 minutes now, which would indicate that the food had been delivered at least 15 minutes ago, I headed downstairs to locate my lunch. I looked at the presently unmanned receptionist desk and nope, nothing there. At this point, I now entered a new phase of near-panic, thinking that the vendor had delivered to the wrong address. My feet were aching at this prospect, as I would have to hoof it to whichever of our buildings they delivered to and bring back the goods. Then I thought, well, sometimes she will just leave it in the kitchen, having been here umpteen times.

 

I check the kitchen. Sure enough, there lies the food.

 

I am minorly perturbed that no one called to inform me that the food had arrived. As it turns out, the vendor had spoken to Security Guard, who had lacadaisically assumed that I was in the kitchen at the time. He did not escort the Vendor to the kitchen, which is in a highly sensitive area. The mistake is understandable though, and I'm not going to raise hell over it. I mean, honestly, I could have easily made the same error. The vendor's been here I don't know how many times. I guess it just trips me out that Security Guard was that lacadaisical. It could have turned into something more serious because of that.

 

But it didn't, and I've now vented, so that's enough about it. :) I would hate to turn into Adminzilla and try to start eviscerating someone via email over something so trivial.