I am cranky because I am not getting enough sleep and because Primo and I have been fighting about how much sleep I get or should get. He said that I complain about my peers from school being more successful in their careers than I am in mine but that I am not willing to sacrifice sleep for success.
I tell him shut up, I have worked 13 hour days and it got me nowhere and besides, what's the point of professional success if you feel like crap all the time? I am on my second caffeinated beverage for the day, even though I no longer drink caffeine, because I do not get enough sleep, thanks to him. I swear, that is the main reason not to get married: so you can get as much sleep as you want.
Primo is cranky because 1. his big mailing did not go out until yesterday, even though it was supposed to go out Friday for Saturday delivery before yesterday's early voting started. He wanted the piece to be in the hands of voters who might be going to the polls yesterday. There are 20,000 households in our district. He has knocked on the doors of 5,000 of them. We have done no radio, no TV, no print because we are not wealthy people. So far, it's all been knocking on doors supplemented with some robo-calls. This mailing was supposed to get his name in front of another 10,000 households or so. Whatever you get for $5,000. Which is coming from our bank account. Ouch.
The mailing didn't go out because the post office wouldn't take a credit card for the postage. So Primo gave the printer/bulk mail service a check from his campaign account. The check did not have our address on it. The PO doesn't want to take a check without an address.
He didn't find this out until yesterday.
He wrote and delivered the check to the printer last Wednesday.
They didn't bother to tell him this at the time, nor did they notify him when the PO turned the check down.
"I would have gotten a cashier's check," he seethed.
Now there are people who have voted who have never heard who Primo is and probably have not done any research on him.
(I know not everyone is like me. I look at the sample ballot, then google each candidate. This is not necessary for national races, of course, but for local races, you have to hunt for the information.)
What's worse is that Potsie and Ralph just shrugged it off. "These things happen," they said.
Unfortunately, they go to head Primo's "Take it in stride!" speech, the one where he gets angry and quotes how Sly, who is not a good example of someone who lets things roll off his back, always told him to "Take it in stride!" Primo's speech includes the quotation along with the reasons that he should not take it in stride.
I am bored with the speech. Whatever. I have no idea what Ralph and Potsie thought. Much of the impact of the speech is diminished if you've never met Sly.
But I do have to agree with Primo that they should have been on top of this and taking it a bit more seriously.
Primo is also cranky because 2. the script is not done for the call center Thursday night. I have found volunteers to work at the call center. Ralph is supposed to write the script. This event has been scheduled for weeks.
The script isn't ready and last night, at 10 p.m., the woman from the call center emailed Ralph that she needed the script today instead of tomorrow because she's not going to be there tomorrow.
Which is its own management issue, but what are you going to do? That's why you don't leave things until the last minute! If you know three weeks in advance that you have to write a script and you're not waiting for new information, then write the darn script!
Primo is ticked because Ralph said he will have the script done in time, but Primo won't be able to review it first.
Primo is a first-class detailed control freak. In many things, like auto repair or computer repair or software design, it's a good quality. You want someone who oversees every minute step of the process, because mistakes are too costly.
And when you are paying someone $3,000 to manage your communications strategy and to write you a script, you expect the person to do the job and to give you the materials for your approval.
"He makes grammar mistakes," Primo said. "I know I don't like the way he writes. I need to be able to review the script."
Primo is a control freak detail person who is also a procrastinator. The important lesson we have learned here is that control freak detail person procrastinators should not hire big picture, not detail person procrastinators.
If Primo and I survive this, it will be a miracle.
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I would put off paying Ralph until...oh,let me think....NEVER! How the hell can you trust someone to write anything important for you if you don't appreciate their writing style or their tendency to make grammatical errors? All that money should have been spent cloning Primo. (Obviously the clones would have been banished to cold storage after the voting had finished).
ReplyDeleteWe were pretty ticked off about that one. Fortunately, once we started, we realized that we could say what we wanted to say, but still. We were super ticked.
DeleteRalph has since redeemed himself and is our friend, but we were angry.