April Fooled

Okay, so it's Friday night, I've just sat down to a Wizards game and a meal, and the phone rings. It's Rachel Ackoff on the other end and she's in a panic. Turns out that Derek, the SSC National Director, just sent out an update to the excom about a variety of things. Point #4 was that he'd spoken with Julia (SSC's staff supervisor in San Fran) the day before and the SSC Director job posting wouldn't be going up until June 30th, we wouldn't have a new director until mid-August.

Now let me give you some backstory: for two months now, we've been trying to get this damn thing posted. That's two months of Rachel calling and e-mailing Julia and not hearing back very often. It's been about one call a week from Rachel to me, asking what else she can do and asking that I call as well. It's been probably a half-dozen calls and e-mails from me to Julia, some of which got responses, some hadn't. This had *already* passed the point of ridiculousness and has been a great example of the Sierra Club at it's most disfunctional. Julia is tremendously skilled, but she's also got too many things on her plate. Thus, the small stuff tends to fall through the cracks. Last part of the backstory is that Julia had set a goal of posting the job by April 1st, so we were already half-expecting to hear that it would be delayed again.

With that said, Derek ended the memo by saying, "with regard to point #4 above, take a look at the date. Take a deep breath, Rachel. HAHAHA."

Rachel called me and asked what we could do. She also mentioned that she thought Derek had a poor sense of humor and was really condescending in that final message. I asked her to send me the e-mail and said not to worry, I would now take care of it. I looked at the message and agreed there was nothing funny about it, but my sense of humor is twisted too, so I wanted to give Derek the benefit of the doubt. I then went to work.

I've started to develop a bit of a reputation in the Club for my e-mail abilities. Basically, the rule is to not hit very often, and when you do hit, knock people down so they don't get up. I've developed it by sending out a few well-worded, very harsh messages over public listservs to people who were really asking for it. Jim Bensman and Karyn Strickler have been particular favorite targets of mine, and I've received a lot of compliments from core club leaders for the messages I've sent. I felt Julia had moved WAY over the line this time, so it was time to take things to another level. So I wrote a particularly polite, but still rather venomous e-mail to Carl (our exec. director), cc:ing a few senior staffers, Julia, and the Club president. I don't like writing a message like this, especially since I like Julia personally, but there was really no other option.

RIGHT after I hit send, the phone rang. It was Rachel. Turns out Derek HADN'T been condescending in his message at all. By "look at the date," he didn't mean "it's months away, try not to freak out." He meant, "April Fools!" So I then had to turn around and send out a mea culpa message to all the senior staff of the Sierra Club. And the thing is, I can't be mad at Derek, because if we'd actually *gotten* the joke, it would've been both tasteful and very funny. Anyway, I felt mortified for the next few days. Not the best way to go around spending your political capital. And not a good way to start the month either.

Anyway, that's the story. No one has ever played an April Fool's prank on me before. I did indeed feel quite foolish this time...