Westerconned, Again

[akirlu]

When I got in from the movie last night, I found a cranky-sounding message on the answering machine. From a woman I'd never heard of before. About my "wanting" to docent for the Westercon art show. And how I had to call her back the same night, no matter how late, because she absolutely had to talk to me that night or she couldn't program me. The tonal undercurrents made it pretty clear that here was a woman harassed beyond her tolerances, and it was All My Fault. So I call her. At 11:45 at night. And got voicemail.

This all left me a bit nonplussed, really. I'd talked to John Hertz some months ago, when he'd asked me if I would be willing to do a docent stint again at the upcoming Seattle Westercon. Shrug. Ja, sure, whatever. It seems unto inevitable that I must be there anyway. That was the last I'd heard of it, until last night. So having agreed months in advance to do a favor to John Hertz being made to sound as if I were an importunate, last-minute requestor to be made a program participant was a wee bit irritating.

I had another call from her this morning; happily, she seemed to have overcome the Miss Crankypants moment. Over the course of our chat a few salient facts came out: apparently John only told her last night that I was on his list of docents. And she was about to take off for some travel to Texas as of this morning, thus was being pressured by the concom to wrap up program before she left. And was concerned that I had been given to expect a comped membership. So okay, that accounts for the crankiness. I'll remain agnostic whose fault it was she was in the bind in the first place. But I know it wasn't mine, and that it shouldn't be presented as such. Which led me to ruminate once again on the social skills fans bring to bear on conducting minimally businesslike transactions.

In the end I can't complain. She did me a number of favors. She had taken the liberty of programming me, anyway, to guarantee I would get a comp membership. Which is nice, I'm happy to save the money. She also offered to put in Hal's name for a Guest membership, which is not free but pretty steeply discounted. And given she only had John's bio to work from, she did a perfectly fine job of programming me: one item on publishing a fanzine, one on the state of conventions, one docent tour, and participation in the first round of Fan Pictionary. I've had worse draws from people who should know a lot better -- Mike Glyer putting me on the Women in Science panel last year comes to mind. And she sounded much pleasanter over the phone today, possibly from ascertaining that I wasn't the importunate mooch she was expecting. Or something.

But golly, she sure didn't present the best possible front on initial contact. How very fannish.