Clocked off

Anyone who has ever openly wondered 'where has the time gone?' has never worked in a law firm in the week between Christmas and the New Year.

I can tell you exactly where the time has gone. The hours between midday and 5pm to be precise. They have dragged their sorry arses haltingly across my computer screen, limped across my desktop and slumped over the digital display on my phone where I watched their painful and slow crawl towards hometime. Time is lucky that it is abstract because if it had a mortal body I would beat the fuck out of it for making my life a misery.

In other news my boss, just when I thought he had exhausted his supply of eccentric requests, brought 9 calendars from previous years down from his shelf today and asked me to 'find the one where January 1st starts on a Thursday'. After some searching, I found the railways calendar from 1998 which he happily hung on his wall. When I offered to put back the other used calendars in his time capsule for future years he looked hurt and said 'are you making fun of me?'

Instructions, partner style

That is, when he isn't mumbling at me.

'Bind these two copies'

'Do you want plastic front covers on them?'

'Hmmm' thinks openly 'do one with a plastic cover and give me an extra copy'

'So you want an extra copy printed?'

'No. Oh look. Just put plastic covers on both of them and give me a loose one'

'So you do want an extra copy printed and not bound'

'No i don't'

2 hours late

'Hey, where's my unbound copy?'

I don't know - it's not so much fun when my boss is really this boneheaded. Like shooting fish in a barrel. I would much rather rack my brains for invective to rail against subtle frustrations of the firm than type verbatim the random instructions given to me by a fool. Where's the challenge in that?

*sigh*

Do as I say, not as common sense dictates

For those who wonder why I would inflict this job upon myself when I so obviously loathe it, here is a small example of the rare and brilliant moments of sublime ridiculousness that I live for:

Let us set the scene with the characters:

My boss (big important partner in international law firm)
Me (office flint)

The task - My boss thrust 4 receipts at me this afternoon and hurriedly told me to photocopy them 'onto one page' to accompany a letter to the police for removing his bike that was parked in the street 'as it posed a security risk'. The receipts were so the police knew how much to reimburse him for his taxi fee and accompanying costs such as replacing the bike lock (let's not even start on how much I love the blind confidence of a man who demands the Metropolitan Police Force give him a refund for inconvenient expense).

The letter has been edited three times: once to cross out the demand that they apologise, twice to add his email address and thrice to remove said email address.

I handed him the final draft of the letter together with the photocopies which were on TWO sheets of paper as they could just not be fitted onto one page as suggested. Some employers would commend my initiative on this action.

Here's what I got from my boss:

'No no no nooooooo. I wish you'd listen to me. I said photocopy them onto ONE page. Why don't you listen?'

'Because they don't fit on one page'

'Well bring it to me FIRST and I'LL then tell you to put it on two pages'

I kid you not.

I feel like I'm in my own cynical comic strip at times. Dilbert gone psycho. He did end up apologising and saying he was just very stressed out at the moment.

But I know it's not stress that makes him a complete and utter nobhead.