Broken wishes

I hesitated to blog about this because I can’t really include a lot of feelings and/or facts with it. Mostly because I have learned from other people’s experiences that you have to watch what you write about work on a blog. And considering the Mayor (Provo) quoted some random blog in his State of the City Address, I’m not taking any chances. So a year ago at this address the Mayor made an announcement about the city going away from the 4-10 schedule he had adopted six years prior, and was changing to have the city center open on Fridays with a skeleton crew. Anyone who was at all around me during that time knows my feelings about that decision. I was not in favor, at all, and thought it would lead to a lot of problems.

I expressed those feelings to the Mayor and several others through a letter and later a very embarrassing attempt at asking the Mayor directly in a meeting. So it was know, by everyone at work how I felt also. Cut to a year later. There are talks about changing back to the 4-10 schedule. Now anyone who knows me I think would have an idea how I would react to this news. But I surprised myself. I wasn’t all for it. When the decision was first made to change the schedule it was said that it would be on a six-month trial basis and then it would be re-evaluated. Well there was sort of a review about seven months later which from everything I heard, was not favorable for staying with the schedule. I really felt like that was the only chance to pull this back. I feared that if you keep telling people you are open, and then end up changing again, we were just setting ourselves up for a lot of complaints. But I moved on. We hired 3 new people to help cover the shifts on Friday and we dealt.

So now here I am hearing that we might go back and I feel like I should be ecstatic. Everyone said there wasn’t anyway we were going to go back, and now we are, I’m getting what I want. So why am I not happy about it? I think it’s because now that it’s been a year, more people are used to us being open on Fridays, although it is still our slowest day of the week. It also sucks because we just sent out 30,000 activity guides to all the residents of Provo and 10,000 flyers to the schools that all say we are open Monday-Friday. And as of February 1st, we aren’t.

Then the other side of it is the human component. Again, I can’t really say what I want right here, but people’s lives are kind of affected by their work schedule. And even more so for people who rely on day care or someone to watch their children. These things affect your life and the way you plan it. Plus add on the fact that we hired 3 extra people who get the majority of their hours on Friday, and now we are taking that away. The change to being open on Fridays was a big deal. It was talked about and hyped up a lot. Even though most of the residents didn’t seem to get the message still a year later.

So cut to this year’s State of the City. We haven’t been told a thing, other than a decision will be made and announced. I had my suspicions about what way it was going and for our department we had made the suggestion of being closed. But we didn’t know the final decision, or when it would be in effect if the schedule was changing. There is a packet that you are handed as you go into the address that highlights the city’s accomplishments for the past year. On the front page of the packet was a list of all the city buildings hours and a new hotline that they are enacting for public phone calls. Of course my eye first went to the hours for the city center. There is was, City Center: Monday – Thursday. It was official.

Ok, so now I wait and see what gets said about it, and when it’s gonna change. Part way into the speech the Mayor says that as part of the budget problems the city is facing that the directors were all asked to evaluate their operations and make them as profitable as possible without sacrificing customer service. He directed people to look at the packet to see a list of city hours and the new hotline information. That was it. Nothing. Nothing at all about the hours changing in any way. I’m not even sure if the public/press has picked up on it. I haven’t seen it mentioned in any articles. No mention of when we were changing (our director had to specifically go and ask to find out).

Not like that’s important to anyone. Not like anyone cares what their work schedule is going to be like in two weeks. Is just work right? So lets just add this to the excitement of all the other crap at work right now. I’m gonna love having to explain to people that yes I know that’s what it said, but no we are not open Fridays anymore. And I know you planned to come do this on Friday and now your whole world has been destroyed because you waited till the last day to register/reserve something and now you missed it. Joy.

And does that mean I ended up on the "black list" for nothing?

*Oh, for you Provo alum, the one good thing about the address was that Scott and Dick received the Mayor's Award of Excellence for their work on the Covey Arts Center. Neither of them had any idea it was coming and it was pretty cool. Definitely went to two very deserving guys.