The "little" people.

Numerous people around me seem to have something up their butt. The first contact I had with multiple colleagues this morning was a complaint of some sort that was an unnecessary insult to another colleague or myself. Maybe I am still in a haze from being surrounded by amazingly generous and kind people for the past 3 days but I have to vent.

1. First I am approached by my boss who said I need to be supporting my coworker who is alone at the front desk. Her tone of voice and body language was abrasively belittling. She acted as if I had not communicated with her and had left her stranded. Little did she know that we had communicated earlier, she just didn't communicate with us to know we had done so.
2. This was then followed by another colleague basically calling my coworker stupid for having forgotten to put forks on the lunch table for their meeting. It was one little mistake. She is not stupid, she just forgot a utensil. He could have gone downstairs and gotten forks and returned to his meeting in the time spent complaining to me.
3. Then I go on an errand to pick up treats a team will use in an interview. I went to the specific grocery store requested and got a magnificent platter of cookies and fruit for the meeting. The point of the treats is to keep a client group awake. I didn't know that required me to purchase chocolate covered coffee beans. Lost points in my admin intelligence there.
4. Soon after I was setting up a lunch video for my team to watch. This entailed hooking up a colleague's personal DVD player to a company computer in order to watch the Region 2 DVD. I was having difficulty so I asked a coworker to help. He started changing wires and then walked away. I tried to figure it out myself while being asked by 3 colleagues in a snoody voice: Is this going to happen or what? I called IT and my friendly desk support specialist came out to help. Within 2 minutes he got everything working while explaining to the first colleague (who had finally returned) why his set-up was not working. Said colleague rolled his eyes openly to those around and stated why his set-up was correct under his breath. Excuse me, but IT got it to work, he did not. Frankly, I am upset with the lack of respect my team gives our IT department. They act as if they know everything and forget the infrastructure behind the systems they use daily. Then they wonder why IT isn't always enthusiastic to help them. You kinda sorta have to be nice to them and listen when they talk in order to gain their respect. Often times the technology problems they experience have to do with not following directions from IT. They don't have protocols and instruction guides to feel powerful, they have them for prevention purposes. That is how they insure your technology will run smoothly. They rarely, if ever, get a call from someone who is happy. All of their calls are complaints and frustrations. I don't know how they do it everyday.

This was before lunch. Let's see what the rest of the day brings...