Chaos Attraction

How To Badly Run Your Event Website

2021-04-28 , 8:22 p.m.

I slept for 9 hours last night. Huzzah!

So once again, that office (I use that term really loosely because it's more of a coalition of 'em) that runs The Big Event That Giant Org Does is uh....doing things in very strange ways and everyone is contacting us about their issues. To which we don't really have answers. They're not exactly telling us anything.

To their credit, they have done the following: (a) added an email address to their website (b) added a "contact us" form to their website (c) updated their FAQ yesterday.

However, Penguin Girl clearly feels the same way I do about their website: it has ENORMOUS VERY PRETTY ANIMATED PICTURES THAT TAKE UP MOST OF THE SITE and almost no useful information whatsoever. God, I hate GiantOrg's website(s) for this crap. NOT HELPFUL. NOBODY NEEDS GIANT PICTURES OF DANCING HAPPY PEOPLE IN FANCY OUTFITS when they need to find out say, how they can BECOME one of these happy dancing people in fancy outfits and they can't do that so well.

Issues we noticed/complained about this morning in the staff meeting:

(a) The only place you can sign up to be in person for The Big Event is on their FAQ. No link to THAT on their front page at all.

(b) The deadline to sign up is OH, THIS EFFING FRIDAY. Um, seriously, you're giving thousands of people two days to sign up for this? YOU ARE GONNA HAVE DRAMA AND HELL FOR THAT. People haven't been able to find out where to sign up for weeks, and now you finally put out where to sign up and you give them TILL THE END OF THIS WEEK? Look, in my job we give people like 1-2 months to sign up to get their Important Documents and then I spend the next 2-3 months getting complaints, with at least 5 people per day, saying "I never knew I had to sign up! Nobody told me! I never got ANY emails!" (I send three, per season.) THEY ARE GOING TO GET SUCH HELL.

(c) A lot of people who are eligible were either left out of the emails, or were sent "some other email" (we have no idea what that's about). They claimed something about "privacy preferences" on the FAQ, we have no idea what that's about either, but see below on "privacy."

(d) Some company that is running this event sent out random texts last week, which one of our employees who does not qualify for attending received. He naturally suspected this was spam and reported it. It was not spam. So a lot of people who are eligible to go weren't invited, but at least one person who isn't WAS? HUH?

(e) I'm seriously wondering if they just want to cut down on the number of people by doing this.

(f) When asked if children can attend, the answer is that "all guests are required to show a vax card." As Lioness and I said, why can't they just say "no?" Or "nobody under 16?" It's such a weasel answer. No international guests allowed either, though that one doesn't really surprise me.

(g) They say "rest assured" that everybody who signs up can be in it, they are just going to rotate a few hundred in and out every time...somehow. Good luck with that. I bet my old contact over there (who, as far as I can tell, did not get replaced) is jumping for joy somewhere at not having to deal with this crap no more.

As someone said during the meeting, it sounds like this was decided On High, without asking any "stakeholders" and then those people are just left to uh...figure it out!

(h) Also, they are trying to answer stuff relevant to our office, which isn't particularly their area anyway, but they just copied and pasted the same vague crap answer twice in a row that that was extremely unhelpful. Seriously, JUST LET ME WRITE THIS DAMN THING FOR YOU. Except I'm uncouth, so I cannot.

Someone else asked to join Yarn Club today, mentioning she was hoping we'd have in-person meetings again. (Second one to ask that in 2 weeks.) Uh..... I haven't the heart to say "Uh, I don't think either of us wants to come back in person, we haven't heard from the person who let us borrow our meeting space in a year, and I have no idea if we'd even be able to or want to meet in a public basement in the future, given the pandemic." I just said "hey, we're meeting on Zoom, welcome to the list!" Yemi and I haven't discussed this At All, but I don't think there's much point in doing so at the moment anyway.

On a related note, to quote Hope today, we got sent an email regarding returning to work "with info but no info." I was all, that's typical. What it actually said was that current arrangements stay until July 1, between July 1 and September 1 some people will be coming back, some may not, who the heck knows, "managers should begin discussions with employees" and give 30 days notice before you have to change. "Finalizing" happens after September 1. I am hoping to stay working from home, but am resigned to the at least semi-realistic fact that management may make my entire unit come back "because public service." I am about 99% sure that everyone else in the office will be allowed to work from home forever EXCEPT us.

In other news, Kelly said that Claire (one of the people in the suffragist play, has Covid) is doing...poorly, oxygen-wise :(

Meg wants to do a tarot card reading for my birthday tomorrow, huzzah. Though I am quite disappointed that the last one she did for me last year did not work out...sigh.

After work I went out again, this time going down the secret tunnel I found yesterday. It led me to an apartment complex, and apparently that's a secret (bike?) path to avoid waiting around for the train to go through. Pretty smart. That is a huuuuuuuge complex, as it turns out. I keep seeing signs everywhere, but I am giving up on that.

I will note that I watched the presidential address and seeing two women behind Joe Biden was very heartening.

After that, I went to DMTC (theater I'm doing Shrek for) in person for the first time ever for my costume stuff. The place is huge (it's been several years since I've been in) and looks like what happens when nobody's coming to your house and you can leave stuff wherever you like ;) I met Jan and Steve in person and of course neither of them had any idea who I was in the mask and all that jazz. Jean, the costume lady, put on a face mask. However, it turned out I couldn't really keep the mask on and try on a turtleneck and she was all, I'm okay with that, nothing's killed me. Okay....so I had mine off while we were in there. Breaking bad, again. But hey, I can technically say I met people I first met off Zoom IRL!

Anyway, the guard outfit is black pants/turtleneck, tabard, hair-covering head thingie. The pig outfit looks like something out of Alice in Wonderland and is a total hoot. Large pink vest that I'd probably wear, large pink pants that need pinning or whatever, blousy froofy shirt, ears and nose. There will be a pink wig at some point. I wandered around the bit to look at the place---big changing rooms, lots of storage, signatures on the walls--and checked out the huge green screen stage. Jan introduced me to it all, said filming will happen there but the live happens at home, and they're going to redo the huge green screen to blue screen.

I also met the props lady, who was pretty hilarious in her complaints about there only being three plastic swords and wanting more swords that look less bad. I briefly saw one guy come in at the end and I wondered if...y'know, the psychic said...but I'm gonna guess that fellow doesn't go for ladies and seemed kinda young and leave it at that. At any rate, NO PING.


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