Urgent Meeting

Just browsed through my emails to see what is awaiting me on the morrow.

Silverback colleague W. sent a short and sweet email this afternoon:

Urgent meeting with you and the administrative assistant tomorrow at noon about conference X.

Now, conference X is happening at our school. W thought that since it is beneficial to the school, the dean's office needed to organize it. I felt that this is just an excuse for a bunch of silverbacks to travel places on "official business" and have a fancy lunch on expenses, so I declined.

The VP insisted that it was important, so I threw some student hours at W and told him to go away. I even directed a student looking for work his way.

I have my own little conference that I am organizing, and I was informing the cafeteria that there would be 150 more mouths to feed on My Conference Day. I also asked if W had bothered to let them know that His Conference (on a different day) is also adding hungry mouths to the lines.

They replied that a) no, they hadn't heard and b) they were closed that day for a staff meeting.

I emailed the student worker, and she replied in panic that she had organized plates and cutlery, but was a bit worried about food. I suggested that she talk to a local caterer who often does stuff on campus for largish parties. I suppose W wants me to fund the food or something.

But I wrote back that I have other plans tomorrow, but he is welcome to see me Wednesday. And maybe learn to write emails slightly more informative than a flake.