Yours truly says, “I’m sorry, this seems stupid. Do I really need to drop everything to get this done?”
Kids, when will I learn? How will I ever be the geriatric marketing manager I need to be so that I can pay my son Vlad’s college expenses?
The furrowed brow, the tapping pen on the desk, that’s all I need from my boss to know that yes, I must! Now git!
So I git. I git so much that my head hurts. I scurry around like the little mouse that I am grabbing at straws for the big cheeses—Mush, mush!
I get statistics, I get bar charts, I get metrics galore. I put them into a report. I polish the report with snappy words and phrases. I find some graphics, I find some illustrations. I send it to her, I send it to him, I send it to all of them. And I wait. And I wait some more.
But no one ever says anything. No one ever reads the report. They’ve noticed a new shiny ball in front of their faces. They’ve got to look into this one now. What am I waiting for? Let’s get a move on! We need this, we need this now! What are you doing over there? We need you over here!
I think this is why god made vodka martinis and the people who drink them.
What do you think?
Mary,
ReplyDeleteI first read this the day after you posted it. My reaction was, Wow! Way to go, Mary! While it definitely brought back memories of similar projects during my days in cube-land, what struck me the most was the voice. Spot on! Very well crafted work.
And I didn't write to you back then because I was so sleep deprived that I couldn't string any coherent thoughts together, except for something blandly inane. Your work deserves more than blandly inane, Mary. But truth be told, that's all I can muster these days, due to certain exigencies in my current life.
I adore your work, Mary. You are a natural at this. And you are just warming up, so keep it going!
-Janette
Mary, your comments reminded me of an incident I'd (successfully, I thought) banished from my conscious. As an impressionable young worker (say, 15 years ago) I was asked by my boss to prepare a manuscript for publication and bring it to him on Monday. Did I mention this was a Friday afternoon? So what do I do but cancel everything I had on for the weekend, work and polish and print and edit and...you know how it goes.
ReplyDeleteMonday, I turned it in to him. Did he read it? Did he read it the next week? Month? You guessed it- he got back to me with comments SIX MONTHS LATER.