Rising to the Doom

[firstfrost]

So, due to various people being lame or miscommunicating, and some denial on my part, I ended up getting poked by the producer for Patience yesterday afternoon: the program designer had punted or vanished or fallen in a hole and wasn't answering email, so could I do the program? For Thursday? Of course "for Thursday" really means "for Tuesday" because Copytech wants two days turnaround (unless they're hosed and want three, which could be a problem). So now the program is done and to Copytech, and I've taught myself to use InDesign (which is, I have to kind of admit, a better tool for graphic layout than LaTeX is, much as I love LaTeX). But now "program designer" will haunt me until the end of my days, as my attempt to foist the task off on someone else this time was a catastrophic failure.

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

Not having a program would make me sad, yes.

But having the group get into the habit relying on some people's ability to make Noble Sacrifices, rather than putting in the work to do the planning and recruiting and monitoring and mentoring that would avoid it, also makes me sad. It's not good for the people who end up doing all the work when they'd rather not, and it's not good for the group's long-term health.

(Also, I was more saying that if you said No firmly up front, you'd be justified in not leaping in to save the day, and if you really didn't want to, you should say so. If you want to, by all means go ahead. :) )