One thing that frustrates me

I do not like being at the mercy of someone else's schedule. I especially dislike it when, for whatever reason, that schedule is not shared with me. I am the person you do not want to be sitting next to in the airport when the boarding of the flight is mysteriously delayed and all the counter people suddenly disappear or avow "I know nothing, nothing!"

Perhaps this is just a me-thing, but I tend to regard it as a bit rude when someone wants to meet with me but does not set a time. Or they set a time, don't show, and then don't call or e-mail or anything to let me know why they're running late. I have had far too many experiences with students who did that - I remember famously one instance where a student swore that 7:30 am was the only time he had free during the WHOLE DAY to meet with me - this on a day when I didn't have to be on campus before 11. But I was a TA, I was new, I was eager to please, so I said, fine, I'd be there by 7:30.

I got there at 7 am. And sat down. And waited. And waited all the way until my class at 11. No show.

I saw the student later that week in lab and asked him if something had happened.

"Oh," he said laughing apologetically. "I didn't feel like getting up that morning."

Yeah. And of course, I always feel like altering my schedule for other people.

I also really hate it when people are late. There is one person I know who, unless you physically go and retrieve him from where ever he is, will be 1/2 hour to 45 minutes late for anything.

I grit my teeth and tell myself that he's just easily distracted and gets absorbed by whatever he is working on. But I've also known chronic late-sters who used it as a power play - either consciously or subconsciously, they were all happy that they could make other people wait on them. It fed their egos.

And I consider being late just because you can pretty rude. We are all allotted limited time on this Earth. We all have the same number of hours in a day. We all have things we must do, and things we would like to do. It seems very selfish to "steal" people's time - even if it's just 15 minutes - because you like to preen your importance.

Anyway. I have one of those schedule-under-someone-else's-control situations today. Someone is supposed to come and help with a technical thing. I need to be on campus to let her in. She was supposed to call me. She has both my phone numbers and my e-mail address. I even called her Thursday (she was not in but I left a message) to plead that I would like to know her ETA, so I could plan my day around it.

No call, no e-mail.

Actually, in this case I'm a small bit worried because this is very atypical of this person. I've called my voice mail at home multiple times (to see if she called there) and no message. I hope nothing happened to her.

But on the other hand, I hate feeling "trapped" in my office - I have done what I intended to do for today already this morning, and while there are always things I COULD do, I'd also like a little free time. So I don't know. I'm going to go home for lunch, I've decided that, and if she calls, fine. I may come back for a bit after lunch, but I'm not going to stay in here all day, surfing and stewing and picking away at different things.

I'm going to see if by any chance one of my other colleagues who has contact with her has come in - and if he's heard anything. I'm almost to the point of assuming something came up and she WON'T be here, seeing as I have heard nothing from someone who is normally pretty diligent.