Busy cubed

Down to Brum today and still catching up on work from last week. I started the day with three things on my to-do list and by mid-day that had expanded to most of a page of my A4 notepad with two items being added for each one I’d ticked off. Most of them were niggly things, although there were some rather stupid ones with the invoicing being delayed from last week and then the accounts people rushing to catch up and making daft mistakes like duplicating a whole run of reference numbers (which my import routines caught in plenty of time).

The most irritating thing was in the afternoon though. I was just starting to think about some of the bigger tasks that I had in front of me when one of the accounts bods asked if I wouldn’t mind helping fold some invoices to get them in the post.

“Fold invoices? Why? I designed them to fit in an A4 window envelope”

“Well, we changed stationary suppliers and the A4 envelopes they sent us have the window in a different place, so we’ve got to use the smaller size ones”

“But that’s stupid. You can’t even fold them in thirds to get them to fit. It’s a complete waste of time and effort. Are you people thick or what?”

Actually, I may have just thought the last bit, but I’m sure you get the point. Working for my company sometimes feels like wrestling in jelly (and not in a good way). People will mindlessly follow time wasting procedures rather.than spend any time thinking of logical ways to tackle problems.

Still, the accident on the M1 that Sally Traffic was warning about was mostly cleared  by the time I got to junction 27, and I’m home in time to sit out in the garden with a glass of cold beer (not just any beer …) and my laptop to write this. So there you go.