shake my head

In my profession there are always things cropping up that are unexpected. Some are funny, some are annoying and some are sad. Then there are the ones that just leave me shaking my head because I am simply baffled.

Today for instance, two female students came to the front counter. They are living in an apartment together and one bedroom unit is unoccupied. They were concerned that "someone" today had entered the third bedroom and turned on a light and left it on. We have had maintenance in the unit working on the heating system and thought it was possible (though unlikely?) that maintenance had let themselves into the bedroom. Still, stranger things have happened and so the office administrator went to the apartment to unlock the door and turn off the light. It turns out there was no light on in the bedroom, it was....THE SUN! Yup. The sun was shining through the window and a stream of sunlight was shining under the door and it freaked them out. I suppose it's true, we don't see much of the sun WAYYYY up here in the north. Unfortunately we were unable to turn it off for them. I'll bet that shows up on our exit survey.
"Office administrator unable to turn off the sun when it shone under the door." We have had complaints about the darkness you know.

Then there's the guy who comes in to make a payment plan and so I ask him what funding he is getting and why he needs to be on a payment plan. He asks ME what funding he is getting. That meeting got confusing very quickly. I am starting to wonder if I live in an alternate reality.

Unfortunately for me it was just "one of those days". I had to do a requisition for some new fire panels. So I do the requisition (in triplicate) and print it off without saving it, because why would I save something I just printed off three copies of? Then I open my email and see a quote from another company for a lesser rate than the one I just made out the requisition for. So I tear up ALL THREE COPIES that I just printed off and start to work on the new requisition and THEN realize that the email is about INSTALLATION of the panels, and the original requisition is for the panels themselves. Nice.

I decide I'm not starting on that lengthy project again this afternoon, I will just make a quick call to a vendor about getting some key tags. My call went through to a salesperson at the company and I made my request. I know EXACTLY what it is that I want. I have a catalogue in front of me and all I need to do is ask if the product comes in more than one color. She asks me "Why?" I should have known then that the three minutes I planned to take on this phone call just blew right out of the window. I was on the phone for over 20 minutes. Instead of her helping me, I spent the entire call tried to explain what I was doing to someone who had NO conception of the project and who was becoming more confused by the minute. She had some interesting suggestions for the project though - WHICH MADE ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER - and she ended up directing me to the website (which I already had used!)

CAN THIS DAY END? Where is my office administrator when I need the sun turned off?