Conversations with The Room

Back to work today feeling much better thank you.

Today I tried to do something I hadn't tried before - I tried to book a small conference room for a meeting. Ideally I wanted to book room 1F. It's just the right size, has a lovely conference phone, and is right near my office.

My colleague Heather walked me through the process of setting up a meeting in Outlook Calendar, I selected Room PTL HO2 Dept 1F, and sent off my invites.

I immediately got a short sharp note from Room PTL HO2 Dept 1F saying it had rejected my booking.

Heather said 'Hmm' then asked another member of staff called Sonya to book the room for me, which she did. One of the attendees then said she couldn't make the meeting anyway, so I decided to rebook for next week.

So back in I went, added my attendees, selected Room PTL HO2 Dept 1F as a resource, and sent off my invites. Failed again. This time I got an email from Room PTL HO2 Dept 1F telling me that the procedure for booking rooms had changed, and to read the attached document explaining how to book a room correctly.

Of course Outlook had blocked the attached document as potentially dangerous.

A bit peeved, I emailed the room back asking it if it would mind reconsidering its stance on letting me book it, and pointing out that I'd love to read its attachment if it could find some way to unblock it.

I immediately received another short sharp email from Room PTL HO2 Dept 1F, identical to the previous one. At this point I realised that the room wasn't chatty.

More peeved, and starting to get really determined to fix this Dilbertish scenario, I looked up Room PTL HO2 Dept 1F in the phone directory, but was unable to get an answer when I called its owner.

I emailed Mike about my being defeated by technology. He pointed out that if I'd got to the stage where I was having conversations with a room I should probably rethink my mental health status and get myself a Starbucks.

This seemed like good advice, so I went to the company cafeteria for a Caramel Macciato (on special, $2.50 for a 16oz, highly recommended).

On the way I recounted my disasters with room bookings to Kathy, my boss. She said she had been happily booking the room with no problems, and indeed she did so in front of my very eyes as soon as we returned to our cubicles.

I emailed Mike again saying the room loved other people but not me, but that I'd had a lovely Starbucks. He said I should fill out a 360 degree review on the room, listing the ways it had made me feel unwelcome to the company, obstructed me from doing my job, reduced me to tears, and generally not done its job properly at all.

I dismissed this as a silly idea, so he suggested instead I badmouth it behind its back, and fart loudly next time I was in it. I said the Starbucks had restored my sanity, and besides I'd now got Kris (who the room also loves) to book the room for me. Everyone had accepted my invite to the meeting, and I was planning on putting my experiences behind me and moving on.

Of course now I need to book another meeting for early next week... I have emailed the room's owner, and I await a reply.

It's funny being back at work. I forgot what it's like. You think 'Oh I'll achieve X Y and Z today', and in fact all you do is spend half the day trying to work out how to book a room, and the other half trying to work out how to print documents to the printer using some new software you're not used to, because they don't have the software that you are used to installed on your machine. Which by the way didn't talk to the monitor/keyboard/mouse yesterday, but seems fine today.

After all that I forgot to leave work and come home to collect my children. Again.