the first (?) day of spring
Everyone is vaguely angry and looks like they want to slit their wrists. “Happy Spring,” said the IT manager this morning, only to incite an argument about whether the 20th or 21st of March is the first day of spring. There were no paper towels left in the staff room and no one could be bothered to go to the janitor’s closet to replace them. The new guy we hired keeps plugging the staff toilet. The staff member who was in trouble on Thursday is now trying to make amends, and she brought everyone in chocolate and offered to stay 45 minutes late today, even though all we need is someone to put the cash away in the safe at the end of the day.
I have to go to a meeting about an initiative that no one wants to implement or knows anything about. It is vaguely politically savvy for us to run it. One of my team called in sick today because her dog is dead. The dog was 11, which her co-workers have calculated is about 45 in people years, and now everyone’s reflecting on their own mortality relative to the age of 45. A couple of weeks ago I read online that the death of a pet can be worse than the death of a loved one. The relationship is easier, you know?
We’re supposed to be implementing records management which means all our files need to be in order. I prefer the chronology of a pile. I know where documents are based on how many other documents are on top of them. My office is covered in piles. An empty desk is the sign of an empty mind, you know…
I put my to-do list into a project management website / free app and it has prioritized my workload such that everything I don’t want to do is at the top. That Inbox Zero guy said something about the “tyranny of a million small tasks”. That Inbox Zero guy said a lot of things. I like to resent him quietly at my desk while looking at my inbox which perpetually has 187 unread messages.
I keep getting emails about webinars I have to go to. Next Wednesday I have to attend a webinar about the reporting functions of integrated library software, followed by a webinar about mental health standards in Ontario workplaces. I am going to punch the guy who invented webinars.
It’s been another productive day at work.