I spent 17 minutes yesterday afternoon getting reamed on the phone by a faculty member who did her review process wrong and needs to re-do it. Even my long-winded arse doesn't have the willpower to recount that conversation at this point. Though I will say my favorite part of it was where she asked me what I meant by saying I'd recommend a department chair do something.....she said no, I need to demand he do it. I tried to explain to her that I can't demand he do anything....he doesn't work for me. But she was more interested in ranting and threatening me than solving the problem.
She told me she was writing everything down, and due to some federally protected information she included in her review being routed to the wrong department, I'd be getting a written email from her, and she was going copy "the very highest levels of authority."
Welp, she did send the email, and she did copy the university president, the provost, the dean of her college, the head of HR, my boss, and two representatives from some state faculty representation outfits I'm not familiar with. My boss Replied All pretty quickly with receipts, showing where she'd failed to read the instructions we provide and do what they tell her to make sure and do so that everything goes smoothly. More email exchanges ensued between the two of them with everyone in the chain still copied, but I stayed out of it. 17 minutes on the phone with her was enough.
My boss' boss contacted me shortly before I left work and asked me to write up a narrative of my recollection of the phone call. So I got to spend a while last night doing that after supper, instead of relaxing and decompressing.
I was never worried about it, and I've already been informed by both my boss and his boss this morning that I did everything correctly and not to worry about anything. There's a lot of issues at play here I can't comment on. My only remaining irritation about the whole thing is that the president, provost, and that particular dean don't know me, and this is the context in which they first see my name. Where I'm being accused of negligence and mishandling sensitive data.
I figured no matter how ridiculous her claims are and despite her refusal to accept any help to correct the situation, this would be taken seriously because of her claim that her ADA privacy rights were violated. And it appears that it's indeed being taken seriously.
Though I was never worried about it, that doesn't mean I wasn't livid. This happened to me several times when I worked at a medical clinic and patients' children would call and act like assholes about the type of care they thought their parents were getting when they didn't know what the hell they were talking about. My blood boils in those types of conversations. I hate it when people don't know what they're talking about, trying to blame me for their stupidity, and I can't really say any of the things I'd like to say to them.
Grumpy.
