“Do you just hate happy people today or something?”
“Yes.”
“Well, knock it off.”
“This?  Coming from you?”
“Exactly.  Consider the source.  If I’m saying it, you may have crossed a threshold.”
-C. and Marie

A few lessons gleaned from this week, a few frustrations, and a few observations:

For all you would-be moguls out there, may I offer a humble tip towards being a good boss: Listen to your secretaries.  They are the people who are responsible for keeping your megalomaniac ambitions logged, organized, and proceeding according to schedule.  Lt. Citrus and Lt. Figaro both laid a project each on me this week without warning, which while it more than quadrupled my workload wasn’t too bad.  The instructions, on the other hand, were maddening.

Quoth Lt. Figaro, “So, I’d like you to update this directory of every employee in the department.  We haven’t done it in three years or so and it’s entirely obsolete.  Theeson was the last person to update it” [Theeson was replaced by Tink who was replaced by Wise who was replaced by me, just for a time frame reference] ” but no one else ever really used it except me, and since she quit I’ve done without it, but I’ve decided I’d like a new copy.”

I tried to tell him that 1) we were hiring and firing half a dozen people within the week so the list would be obsolete by Friday anyway and 2) that I kept an up-to-date roster on the department server already complete with names, call numbers, and personal and professional contact information.  “Well, just make it for me then if no one else will use it,” he smiled and went back to his office.  I tried not to cry and mentally cut back my lunch hour.

Lt. Citrus’ project was validly important to the university, but the instructions he gave me to do it all came in the wrong order, with outdated software, and logically confusing interjections of last minute ideas, corrections, or modifications.  And since it involved the creating, labeling, stuffing, packaging and mailing of literally 100 packets, by the end of the second day I had papercut my fingertips to shreds. 

It’s been a long, hard week and I’m intensely glad it’s Friday.  And I want Tink back desperately, work without a good friend to grumble about assignments to is drudgery.