5 days down, none to go!

It's a miracle that I got through this week.

No one slept the night before our big inspection.  I arrived early to ensure that seven boxes of files had been prepared for the assessors as per the instructions we received.  I counted the boxes, one for each professional who had been named in the inspectors' letter.  Perfect.

A little later I returned to the file room for one last check - and there were eight boxes of files.  What the...?  I spotted the extra box.  It was labelled with the name of a professional who wasn't slated for inspection.  I went immediately to his secretary to find out what was going on.  Having overheard some of the other secretaries talking about preparing 12 files for each of their bosses, she assumed that she was supposed to too. Essentially she volunteered her boss to be inspected.

This lady's boss would not have appreciated that.  I mean really, really not appreciated it.  I set her straight and she took off at warp speed to take back the box before any harm was done.

At lunchtime a colleague of mine took lunch orders from all the uppity-ups involved in the day's proceedings, and we set out together to the closest hot-table takeout place. A stout, doughy woman wearing a white apron asked me for my order.  I wanted a quarter chicken dinner with potato wedges and steamed veggies.  The place packs a lot of food - I've often split one of these orders into two lunches, one for the following day.  They keep two sizes of foil containers behind the counter, one the size of a dinner plate, and one a fair bit smaller.  The chicken dinner always comes in the large container.  The woman behind the counter pulled out a small one.

"I want the chicken with two sides," I said in case there was any misunderstanding.  She nodded.  Potato wedges went in.  Steamed veggies went in.  She didn't stint on either.  The container was almost full.  Then she took the chicken leg and stuck it on top.  The lids for these containers are flat, foil-lined cardboard disks.  There is none of that extra space you get with a plastic dome.

The chicken was sitting on top of the veggies so its bottom edge was almost level with the container's top edge. The woman took the cardboard lid, positioned it on top of my chicken, laid her big, wide hand over the lid, and pressed down hard.  The lid sank down, but not far enough.  She repositioned her hand, and pressed harder.  Man, she mashed my lunch but good.  I half-expected her to turn around, jump up on the counter and sit on it.  I was slightly tempted to complain, but the scene was so comical that I figured I'd rather just let her go for it and enjoy the slapstick.

For all that, lunch tasted fine.  It didn't matter to me that my potato wedges were flat.

There is someone on my staff who is on vacation right now, and her absence is creating a huge volume of work.  I have two people helping out, but one is new to it and the other is slow and inaccurate, so I'm doing some of the work myself and double-checking everything else line-by-line.  It's basically data-entry for a never-ending stream of repetitive, monotonous reports.  If I never see another one it'll be too soon.  Sadly, the only woman who can save me won't be back for yet another week.  When I close my eyes at night I see these reports swimming on the backs of my eyelids.  I wake up with a dry mouth and knots in my shoulders, dreaming about data entry errors.  Five days down this week - I did it!

Five more days next week.  I can do it!