Good enough for government work

I've been at the new job for just about 2 months now and very quickly discovering the definite negatives of working for the government.

• Its government. Enough said, right?
• I have to clock in and out and pretty much account for just about all my time. This part is still a toss up -- some days I miss billing (and accounting for all my time) and some days I don't.
• My job's pretty darn boring.
• It can be SO disorganized. This made me livid last week - I am supposed to go for a 2-week training class at some point. The class is put together by the main office in Baltimore; classes are held around the county; and every new attorney across the country has to go. So some one at the main office figures out who goes when. Its mostly based on when we started, so seems pretty easy to assign people to a training class, tell them when and where it is and be done with it, right? Sure, make some travel arrangements like reserve a bunch of rooms. But seems like sitting down for a couple of days to figure out all the details should get the job done. Right? Everyone gets notice, they can make some plans and voila. Seems like the nice organized way to arrange it, right? There might be last minute hiccups, people canceling, training instructors having issues, etc. But the majority of it seems straight forward. NOT apparently for the government. First of all, they seem to give people very little notice. If any. I was tentatively signed up to go July 20 - July 31. For like a month a half! No confirmation, no final "go get your ticket" nothing. I organized my life around these dates because everyone told me that "its a pretty sure thing; they're just slow to confirm - they usually just give you about week's notice." OK, does any one else find it disturbing that the federal government is spending thousands of dollars buying last minute airline tickets for people to fly across the country on short notice? When there's a federal deficit of trillions of dollars, seems to me like any amount of thrift can only be a good thing. But no, apparently they like to keep us hanging. So I waited. G wanted to buy tix to come out to meet me during the weekend in between but we couldn't without final confirmation. I was trying to make plans see my family in the east coast but couldn't tell them anything for sure about when I was coming. I'm planning my friend's baby shower and I finally had to set a date (Aug. 8, no chance of conflicting with my potential travel dates). Well, last week rolls around, still no confirmation. During this whole time, our director has called multiple times to check on the status only to get a "nope, not confirmed yet." Well, finally, last week, my boss called again, and was told that actually, I had never been on that list at all. Um, then where did we get those dates from, you f'in moron? I didn't make them up. Why tell me I'm "on the list" for those dates, if its not true. AND to make matters worse, they said that they had actually wanted me to go July 6 - 17, but since I couldn't, I had been bumped to the bottom of the list. THAT made me madder, since no one had told me I was on the July 6 list. And actually, my director and I had a conversation about that date specifically cuz my friend's wedding was that Sun night before, and it would have been tough to be in the east coast by 8 am the following morning. It had actually been a source of quite a bit of stress for me for a while, but we decided there was no point worrying about it in the abstract. And since HE would have been the first one told about my training dates, I figured I was good. So, no word to him or me, but some how they had decided I was going on 6th and since I couldn't (which I guess they assumed I couldn't without asking), I was bumped. That was the story. Though I still have no idea where they got it from. Seeing as they threw out the July 20th themselves. And then why not mention during one of the 5 times my director called that actually, I wasn't on the July 20th dates at all. He asked them if I was confirmed for the 20th. Sounds to me like it was a definite no all along. How hard would it have been to communicate that? My NEW training dates (for which I am of course not yet confirmed) are for Aug. 3 - 17th, but I can't go since I have my friend's baby shower on the 8th. I plan on telling them that just a few days before.