Don't wear it out! Ok, so I need to preface this post's title with
what "BW" actually means... so remember from my last post about World
AIDS Day, where the Embassy was slightly in chaos as we tried to
coordinate events at the last minute? Well, my true "B" nature came out
(will explain later) and I started directing people around so that we
wouldn't be scrambling last minute as the Ambassador rolled in... of
course, when I direct people, my voice natural gets a "little" louder.
So, the head of HR, Pegie (sp?) saw me bossing the USAID info table
peeps around, and started calling me "BW", for Bossy Woman. And now,
whenever I see him at the Embassy, that's what he calls me. Just one
teensy weensy instance, and I'm branded for life. O_o
Unfortunately,
or fortunately as the case may be, my BW side reared its ugly head
again this morning as we set out for a pilot test of our site visit
assessment. In short, we have these questionnaires that we're trying to
administer to our HIV care and treatment facilities, to assess whether
they are providing the necessary services to the patients, and what
areas or services need improvement. Today's trial run was to see what
kinks needed to be worked out before we actually started running the
program officially. I can understand the slight urge to try and fit in a
pilot run before the end of the calendar year, just so that the office
could get a general idea of what needs to be fixed/tweaked/added/etc.
But as a representative of a government organization, how can you expect
to run a successful pilot if you don't take the time to prepare for
it? Pilot does not mean you do everything on the fly! ARGH. Sorry,
this is my rant for the year (thankfully it's December, so I haven't
touched next year's quota yet :P). How do you expect the medical
director of the hospital to prepare for a visit by the CDC if you give
them less than one business day's notice? And then, to make matters
worse, you don't show up the day you had planned (last minute, might I
add)? Oh wait, I'm not done. You reschedule it to the following day,
then you arrive almost 2 1/2 hours late, because you didn't print out
usable hard copies of the questionnaires? OMFG. This is the CDC for
crying out loud! Jess and I spent almost 2 hours sitting in the van,
waiting in the motorpool parking lot before the team lead could figure
out how to print the forms so that the font wasn't miniscule 2 point
font. (Oh yes, I failed to mention that we actually left the parking
lot once before, and it was upon finding out the font was 2 point font
that we turned around and returned to the CDC office, only to wait 2+
hours for senior team leads to figure out how to print the stupid
questionnaires properly)
What really pushed me off the edge this morning was how the team
lead wanted to have a meeting in the van before leaving for the hospital
(mind you, we were already 2+ hours late), on how we were going to run
the site visit. Uh... where were you on Friday? Why are we doing this
now? And he started talking about how he doesn't know how to score the
questionnaire... PEOPLE: YOU DON'T GO IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE
DOING!!!!!! Blaargggh. I couldn't hold it in any longer--I basically
lashed out at him and said we should NOT be running a site visit if no
one knows what to do. Then he started shirking responsibility, saying
that it wasn't his fault, blahblah. Seriously? Please grow a pair and
act like an adult, you are not a 5 year old. SIGH.
Ok, so
enough ranting. To tie this back into my whole "BW" title... I was
chatting with our veterinary medicine officer later in the afternoon,
and one of the site visit team members popped by her office to say hi to
us... then proceeded to say, "Wow Teresa, I never knew you could be so
LOUD".
So there you have it. I'm loud and I'm bossy. But you already knew that right? :) I guess I should be LBW from now on...
3 days and counting until I am stateside again! Cali, get ready for my arrival!
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