Why do I try to help?

First of all, thank you Family Blender for poisoning my brain. That F*&%ing song is rattling around and will NOT go away. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

So about 5 weeks ago I proactively sent a message to a department here at work which is notorious for last minute requests. I had anticipated some things they would need to with the new fiscal year beginning and prompted them for the information I needed to make a smooth transition. My reward? Replies first with confusion (what? we need to do something?), then with stalling (we’ll look at it and get back to you), then with bitchiness when reminded that things would stall (Fine! I’ll get to it when I can!). Naturally they farted around and did nothing until an emergency came up.

Today, I again was only trying to help and was rewarded with the 1st degree. This relates to one of my volunteer positions. Not that I didn’t know what would happen. In fact, I cringed when I made contact with this particularly needy person knowing it would open a can of worms I did not care to deal with. Still, gotta love it when folks cannot read! I watched a couple of emails go by that I could tell needed a response from someone. I happened to know that the person who needed to respond (T) was out of town and had been for awhile. Because I had received a text message from T this morning which state he was still traveling, I thought I would pass that on to the person writing all the emails just to let him know there would probably not be a terribly quick response. So here is the exact message I sent:

“FYI – T is in Indiana right now. Don’t know when he is returning yet, but he’s been out of state for at least the past two weeks and is still gone.”

Response:”Will he be back for a meeting next week? Will you talk to him? Call him and tell him I need…..”

Apparently the sentence ‘dont know when he is returning’ was garbled in my message, so I tried again.

“I don’t know when he is returning. I told you everything I know. I just happened to receive a text from him stating he was in Indiana and thought you should know since it is not clear that he has access to email. Why don’t you text him and ask him when he is returning? Or call him? I was not planning on talking to him again.”

Response: “Why is he there? Will he be back for a Thursday meeting?”

Which must of course mean that the first TWO sentences of the second email I sent were somehow eaten or translated to another language, right? ARRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!