Working for a living

Man. I’ve been working all day. At Work! You would think I was getting paid or something. It’s not pay, but it is something. The good news is I can look forward to Employee Recognition Day at the end of the month. I was a good little employee this morning. I made copies, I drove to out off site storage place, I made more copies. I mean like a huge amount of copies, like deforestation level of copy making and then I was through. Well, until I found a couple of sheets of orphan paper and then I had to tell my boss, (!) And then I had to drive to the where our mail goes before it goes where ever it goes and I want points for telling my boss I messed up but I don’t think I’ll get any.

It started at like 7:45 in the morning. My boss wanders in and announces that a subpoena has landed and I need to get several years of documents for this facility copied and to her now. I say “Um. A couple of those years are in archives”. And she says “GET THEM OUT OF ARCHIVES, NOW. I NEED THEM BY TOMORROW!". This was later updated to “NOW I NEED THEM NOW GO!GO!GO!, because my boss only knows how to speak in caplock. Boss is not going to be in for the rest of the week. So I flip through my list of archived material and pray that I transcribed my hand written notes correctly and didn’t leave this facility off the final version, which I have done in the past… then I called archives to warn them what was coming to tell them my tale of woe and they say “Well. We’ll try to get them to you” and I say “Today”, and they say “We’ll do our best”. Which is archive for “We’ll get to it whenever”. I even had to promise to drive to the hinterlands to pick the documents up myself.

Fortunately, I had marked the archive boxes correctly and they were able to find them and as soon as they pulled them they called me back. They must have been in a good mood because there can often be quite a pause between the pulling of the docs and the actual calling of me to come get them. It can make me very crazy during times when I am all ready fairly crazed and do not need more craziness in my day. But this time they took pity on my crazed self and dispensed with the waiting period.

And then I made copies. And Copies. And Copies. And then I thought I was finished. I basked in the glow of my boss’s joy and I went to lunch, an hour late. After I got back from lunch and was putting away all the paper I had pulled out in my mad rush to get this job done, I found more. I made the copies and bravely went to tell my boss. She said the packet had all ready been sent. Panic! Freaking Out! All Hands On Deck! Battle Stations! I made a mad dash out the door and was able to find the all ready mailed packet and stuff the offending material inside the (unsealed) envelope with the rest of the documents. Whew. Not so much basking in the glow anymore. But if they were so all fire important and the fate of the world depended on the docs getting out NOW, why did we send them through the regular mail? Not by Fed-Ex or UPS.

That pissed me off.

It’s hard to get back to work after all that working and rushing and deforestation-ing and all hands on decking and all the attendant state sponsored freaking out... I think all that early morning working should be enough to cover the rest of the days work or at least count double. I should be able to go home.

I am totally going to have to put the archive guys on my Christmas Card list.