Who's pissing on your chips today?

[monster]

1) the school newsletter editor who "corrected" the grammar in my latest haiku about scrip so it went from this:

Trees gift colored leaves,
Scrip bucks color school field trips.
Strong roots yield great joy.

to this:

Trees’ gift-colored leaves,
Scrip bucks color school field trips.
Strong roots yield great joy

wtf are gift-colored leaves? hmmm? couls she not see the pattern in the structure s of the first two lines? could she not see the clever repetition of color but as a different word form? hmmmm? Mine may be crap, but her version is much crapper and I'm embarrased to have had my name attached to it.

2) an asshole parent at the swim club. We're in a borrowed pool this season because ours is under construction. we had mechanical problems, lots of no swm nights due to other teams having meets (there are 4 teams using this pool instead of the regular 2), and meet schedule cock-ups due to two teams withdrawing from the league at the last minute. none of these are our fault, but they're bloody irritating.

Last week, we were supposed to have a Tri-meet on Thursday. A butterfky meet (there are 4 events at each meet -medley relay, freestyle relay, individual freestyle sprint and indiviadual specialty) The other two teams rescheduled it for tuesday. but forgot to consult with us. or in fact even tell us. after we didn't show, the realized, and sheepishly left a message on the coach's answerphone that the thursday meet was cancelled. no reason given, we ferreted around and worked it out. but they held the meet anyway without us, so no chance of a reschedule.

But we need to have a butterfly meet. so after further rooting around, we discovered there was one butterfly meet atill to be held in the league (a rescheduled dual meet due to another fuck-up), so we muscled in on it. the meet was Monday night, we got confirmation that it was Ok for us to swim Saturday night. normally, the non-competitors don't swim when we have a meet, but because it was such short notice nd we've had so many pool closures and other problems 9our swimmers have been swimming in room temp water for 3 weeks), we hired extra coaches so the youngest group -who mostly don't compete- could still have practice.

so i sent out an email with all these details and asked people to respond if they got it, because we would call all families who hadn't with the details (as a courtesy). We had to call 52 families (about 50%). Two people did this. They rock.

Today i get this email:

I'm not sure whom this e-mail is actually going to so please forgive me for not addressing you personally. Unfortunately, I need to share with you my frustration. Let me state that I am not e-mailing you to complain about the pool or meet situation as I truly believe that this is just plain unfortunate and is no ones fault. What I am frustrated about is a phone call I received Sunday late afternoon. I was out with my family and my mobile phone rang. I choose to answer the call which was my first mistake. The woman who called identified herself as being form Ypsi otters. The jest of the conversation is that I was chastised for not responding to an e-mail that was sent out Saturday afternoon. First off I do a great deal of volunteer work so I truly understand the commitment that you all have made and I appreciate all that you do for this organization. However, what I am frustrated about is that when you send an e-mail on a weekend while it may be time sensitive you should not call up families and belittle them because they did not respond as quickly as you felt they should have. While I realize that in the perfect world all families will sign up in advance for meets and all coaches will have all of the line ups done ahead of time you and I both know this is not the case. My kids have swam in 2 meets this year and at both of these meets the line up where being done at the pool that evening. So, it is very perplexing to me as why it was deemed necessary for you to call all of the families that did not respond to the Saturday e-mail? I appreciate the fact that these call where made, however I don't think they were done in the spirit of being considerate. If my children miss out on an opportunity because we did not read a notice I would not blame anyone except myself. If the calls where made because you as a board are also frustrated with the current situation then one would expect the caller to be considerate, pleasant and maybe even apologetic. I'm sharing this information so you can have an understanding as to how this was received. I'm going with the assumption that the woman who called me was just plain frustrated with the notion of calling all of the families and that it was not her intention to come across the way she did. I really think that your expectations of getting 100% response within such a short time frame ( and being a weekend) was really unrealistic.

I hope that my e-mail is received in the spirit in which I am sending it. Things cannot change for the better if one is unaware of the problem.

Thank you for your time,

just fuck right off, honey. I'm glad it wasn't me who made those calls because then I'd be really fucking pissed. and she'd be dead

Fortunately, we had nothing but positive feedback from everyone else, so we know it's her who's off her freaking trolley.

oh, was I ranting? i'm so not sorry And I feel much better. now i'm calm enough to reply to her..... well, almost