The Fine Art of Diplomacy...

...is the ability to tell someone to "Go to Hell" without them being offended. If you're realy good, they may even ask for directions. This past week, on top of being horrifically short-staffed, I was also lagged as all get-out from the time shift.

/workrant on, and be warned, some links may be a little NSFW...

Monday was particularly bad: we were the most short-handed that day, I was the most lagged that day, and Monday's are bad anyway. There seemed to be no end to the calls from very self-important people that only thought to call in at that very moment for a problem that they needed fixed an hour ago. Or the sectretary who places a top-level ticket because their screen resolution is too small. And don't forget the person who knew they needed to check a laptop out last week, but decided to let IT know about it an hour before the big presentation...

Seriously, a lack of planning and common sense on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. But in my line of work, there are certain things you can say or do to effectively deny an asshat request and alert the requestor to their own asshattery without making them angry at you for being the bearer of either bits of bad news. Usually, things that are requested for checkout need to be asked for several days in advance, so one always has policy to fall back on. It's also part of any good IT specialist's troubleshooting repertoire to have the end user reboot their computer. If they protest, saying they have already done that, tell them that some issues require three reboots to resolve. The Mute Button is a good friend of mine, as is its older brother, the Hold Button. I tend to save the Hold Button for particularly vicious people, as our hold music is nausiating - 2mins on hold, and if they're still there, they're significantly mellowed out.

Don't get me wrong: I'm one of the most people-persons I know in IT... Stop laughing. >.>; I generally want to help decent human beings, and I don't think I'm asking for much in asking for that. But I can NOT stand rude, thoughtless and self-important people.

/workrant off

Work aside, we've been busy trying to unpack things we need to do basic cooking and cleaning, while trying to keep the resulting mess down to a small explosion. Clara is absolutely insane lately. Happy, angry or random: it makes no difference anymore. She shrieks for any reason or no reason. One day this week I had to put her to bed nearly an hour early, simply because she was giving me a migraine with her incessant screams. I know she doesn't mean it: she's such a sweetheart and is learning new words and phrases everyday, but sometimes (read: WAY too often) she just gets so excited that words completely escape her, and she goes off on a shriekfest.

To top it off, she's finally learned how to open doors... She's walked out the front door, walked in on people in the bathroom and gotten herself stuck in the garage, unable to reach the doorknob to get back in the house. Recently, in the middle of the night, she's climbed out of her crib, left her room to go downstairs, ate the cat's food and knocked over a water bowl, opened the door to our room to come over to my side of the bed and start talking to me. o.O? I rolled over to see a crystal blue pair of eyes staring at me. I asked her what she was doing here, to which she simply said "Pi? Pi-pi?" That's Clara-speak for "Pick me up?" I carried her back to her room, but we're seriously going to have to look into doorknob covers.