Priority mismatch

[muckefuck]

It's bad enough that our department head sends around birthday cards for everyone to sign.

It's worse that she is a chronically late personality who often resorts to putting RED! RUSH! FLAGS! (normally reserved for immediate patron requests) in order to get them circulated the same day. (Even worse, she's been known to add "SUPER RUSH! HAND CARRY!" How the hell else am I going to get the card to one of my coworkers? In a condor's beak? Wrapped around a brick?)

But the absolute worst is that people are now wandering around the department trying to TRACK DOWN THE CARDS! In the space of two minutes, I had two different people (including my boss) asking me what cards I had seen and who I'd given them to.

Jesus H-E-Double hockeystick Christ on Stick! Are there some greater departmental priorities? Like, I dunno, doing last-minute Christmas shopping online?

Comments

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I'm on a slippery slope with the bibliographer who orders 3 times her budget every year. Every year, I hand her back the gigantic pile of orders I couldn't place, and she goes through and picks the ones she wants put on the next year's budget. Over time, this has transformed into her assigning each order a priority status (very, high, and none, or sometimes "next," as in, make this the next thing you order). This year, she started designating everything she wanted absolutely for sure this fiscal year as RUSH, which of course is about 80% of what she gives me. So, RUSH is now a meaningless category. What happens when I hand her back a gigantic pile of orders marked "RUSH" this July? Probably nothing, but it's bugging me. RUSH ought to mean RUSH, dammit!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

"When everything is 'Priority', then nothing is 'Priority'."--Judith Nadler

My boss has a similarly slippery understanding of these categories. Years ago, I happened to refer to some types of work as my "lowest priority". She protested that she didn't think these things should be considered "lowest priority". So I asked, "Then what should be my lowest priority?" and she replied earnestly, "I don't think anything should."