Five down, plus mountains and molehills

Our fifth (of eight) job candidate finished her interview today, and was dispatched to the airport without incident. Which is good, because I really didn’t want to have another incident.

Turns out that today’s candidate was having difficulty walking due to a knee injury. I didn’t know this until she arrived on Sunday. On Monday, we try to make some arrangements to book one of the University’s golf carts that they have for visitors. I call the Dean’s office, and the secretary contacts Visitor Services, who says that we have a cart reserved and that there’s no special authorization needed to drive it. I get there this morning, and I get told that you do need to be authorized to drive the cart.

Fine. There's a student who can drive the cart, so I ask for her to be our driver for the morning.

The person in charge also informs me that she wasn’t there yesterday (good for her, having a workday away from campus; my total remains at one for this year), and admonishes me for not calling in advance. (Somehow, our phone calls from yesterday didn’t count because she wasn’t there, I guess. Not that we could have phone earlier, since we weren’t informed of the need earlier.)

Fine.

Get the cart, take it over to the Science building, and the candidate is already in her first meeting. We leave instructions for the staff that the driver will come back to pick up our candidate and take her across campus for her next meeting with one of our Associate Vice Presidents in our administration building. After some time, I get word that the candidate is still in that office, and that she needs transport back to our building. I phone Visitor Services phone number as listed in the directory, and it doesn’t work. I phone back to the administrative office asking them to phone, because I can’t reach the number. After a few delays, our candidate is back in the building.

Just before the seminar, I am informed by the Chair of our Department that the Ass. VP our candidate met with was mad that we didn't make arrangements to have her picked up, and emailed the Dean about it, and was asking that I apologize to our job candidate.

Fine.

I can deal with people complaints about me made by people without any knowledge of facts or circumstances. I apologize to our candidate after her seminar. She had thought little of it. I write an apology and send a bunch of copies to the Chair, Dean, and Ass. VP.

I did manage to finish proofreading my latest article today. I am so pleased to see my words professionally typeset and soon to be in a journal again. I answer a few more emails and make a few lecture and note revisions, and do a few more search committee things.