Chaos Attraction

Canceled Mid-Ceremony

2022-06-10, 10:14 p.m.

It's Graduation Weekend here or at least all the schools in town are doing it, which leads to an odd dichotomy of either places being utterly empty or utterly full (presumably wherever the graduations are being held + restaurants, all of which I am avoiding). I had to go to Giant Org today IRL and literally the only people I saw were people using the scenic spots of Giant Org for graduation pictures. "I'm just trying to get to work," one of my coworkers grumbled as as she was trying to not photobomb someone. There's one particular scenic spot right by my office that literally had a LINE for picture taking in front of it today. This is the same spot where they've posted signs saying PLEASE STOP THROWING CONFETTI HERE, IT'S NOT BIODEGRADABLE AND ANIMALS WILL EAT IT AND GET SICK and yet, the confetti continues to be thrown. I walked by someone throwing a bunch around today, but it turned out to be ripped up daisies. Is that any better?

I am grateful these days that I don't have to go to or work at any commencement ceremonies any more. I used to have to in my old life, and I used to be hit up for printing publications for them back in the day, but I am now gloriously out of the loop on that stuff. That however, hasn't stopped one complete rando from emailing me and everyone she could find begging to get a kid into a ceremony oh, today because she found out today she could be here. TODAY. O RLY, I thought, and wrote back to say that my office doesn't put on ceremonies, it looks like you cc'd the one that did, hopefully they respond to you. But according to the auto-response from that office, the deadline was mid-April and someone is only part-time interim-ing responding to emails, so I suspect they won't get a response. Other people have been trying that stuff on me earlier in the week and complaining "they don't respond to me!" and I'm all, what, you think I have power and can make people respond to you? LOLNO. I have no idea how those places handle the late requests, but possibly ignoring them may be what they do, I suppose.

It's supposed to be 106 here except I don't think it got that bad--it was 102 when I left work, about 93 by the time I got home 20 minutes later--BUT the biggest graduation ceremony going on today was apparently being held outside somewhere and it made the news when they actually canceled the ceremony MID-CEREMONY "because it's too hot." This seems a little ridiculous to me since it was in the 90's in the morning and this is a place that hits 100's fairly frequently and they hadn't even gotten that bad in the morning yet, but I wasn't there and I presume sitting in bleachers with no shade for hours is as awful as that ever was pre-pandemic. They claim to want to do a makeup thing on Sunday, but that sucks for people who were only going to be here today.

Between the hot goss I heard from people coming into my office afterwards now that they have free time, and ye olde local Slack channel, they supposedly only got through about 15% of the people walking across the stage. One lady online was pissed they had to sit through an hour of commencement speaker, like anyone gives a shit about that (agreed) when they flew in from Atlanta and all they were there for was their kid walking across the stage. And someone else said they heard from their coworkers that punches were being thrown?!

Just for funsies after I read that, I decided to hit the school Reddit page and oh lord, the drama!

* There is a video of the spontaneous cancellation, with boos and "FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUU!" being yelled.

* Apparently it was supposed to be going from 8-10 to avoid this issue but started late. Like super late. Like the speaker didn't start until 10, walking didn't until 11:30(?) sort of late?

* Water was apparently limited.

* As several others pointed out, IT GETS HOT HERE AND EVERYONE KNOWS THAT and even if today was a bit more extreme than usual, they should have planned for it.

* Someone started a complaint petition to always have graduations indoors again. Another started a petition to fire the chancellor for being sucky at long term planning, not just with this but with the pandemic. It only had six signatures when I looked at it.

* I should probably say that this school decided to revamp their graduation ceremonies in 2019, in a "bigger, longer, uncut" sort of way, which was supposed to be at an indoor stadium in Sacramento. I have no idea what happened to the last part of that plan. I can't for the life of me think why this sounded like a good idea and apparently everyone including the employees was finding it confusing.

* Six people got hospitalized and there were 35 medical calls, according to news from the other end of the state.

* I thought that three giant ceremonies was a bad idea from the getgo and this was an even worse trainwreck!

* This announcement is followed up by a SUPER PERKY LADY SPEAKER announcing food and fun on the field and you can take pictures with the chancellor! I'm guessing that was pre-recorded because it would be hard to keep a straight face saying that live. I note they cut the video feed too.

* I feel very sorry for their PR lady, who I used to vaguely know like a billion years ago.

Also, I note that somehow all of my coworkers snuck out and left the office by 4:15--even one I suspect wasn't supposed to because she didn't announce she was leaving early or anything--and I was all "do I really have to stay here?" Then thought "crap, if I have to man the Slack channel...." sigh. I left a little early but not as early as I could have gotten away with. I at least finished the super tedious list I had to do for four effing hours before I knit at my desk until I could "leave."

In other work moments, I was snacking, put on my mask to go out and photocopy stuff or whatever, and found food in there. I immediately trotted over to Adventure Girl's office and announced, "I found a snack in my mask!" "Saving it for later!"

In other news, Giant Org is discontinuing required every 2 week testing in a few weeks. They will still offer free optional testing at the farthest possible place to walk to (while charging for parking--no more free 15 minutes to get tested! FFS) Sundays through Thursdays during work hours. Better than the NOTHING the town/county will be offering circa July, mind you, but still a bit annoying.

After I got home, I ate a lot of frozen ice cream, hung out on the patio (it was better), read the drama. Later two fire trucks and an ambulance pulled up outside here--they appeared to be for the apartment 2 doors down (Reggie's old place). I never heard a fire alarm go off. I'm guessing they were throwing a party because there were a lot of people standing around (far more than can actually fit in these one-bedrooms), and there was some little kid(?) crying a lot, but not in an "I'm dying" sort of way? The EMTs got out the gurney and eventually hauled someone away...that's all I could figure out there. Very strange.

Then there was an update for tomorrow's ceremonies since there is still gonna be a heat warning: start on time, NO processional or hitting the stage at all, "finishing by nine" and of course they prioritize the Big Shot Speakers. They said they'd do some kind of make-up ceremony later. Hoooooooooo boy. As someone else said today, people aren't going to the ceremony for the damn speakers, they go for the names across the stage.


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