Not necessarily an addendum on my quick meeting before I left work for the weekend Friday afternoon, but it comes out of that meeting: My boss asked me how I was doing on the main project I still have left to do, namely getting this weekly spreadsheet out. He's been harping on this ever since the project began, and I really am doing the best I can, being fast while making sure I'm thorough. That said, I have a ton of boxes back there -- a ton. And whenever I get sidetracked with another thing I need to get, that's more time spent away from addressing the spreadsheet.
My boss doesn't know that. It's become quite apparent to me that as up to my eyeballs I feel about this project, he does too. Maybe moreso, since 1) I know more about the nuts and bolts of how this entire project (not just my spreadsheet) and 2) it's probably his ass on the line if this all goes south. (That doesn't excuse him being a dick to me, but ... that's complicated.) But I think he's gotten the impression that there is a lot less work to be done than there actually is. He affirmed my position when he asked me to get all those things done in the next two days, and enlist another temp's help if I needed to.
Dude, it's not going to get done in the next two days. It may not get done in the next two weeks. It's ... a lot of stuff. And as long as I am going to make sure I have everything correct (and even though I get some wrong, but I still need to go through these with a fine-toothed comb), I can't just jet through these.
But, he wants it done. So what am I to do? I have no fucking clue. It may be time for me to cede some of this to the temp, but that might make coordinating all the names onto the one spreadsheet that has to be sent even more difficult. What I'm worried about is come Tuesday, he'll look at all the boxes that will still be in the back (and there will be boxes in the back) and be absolutely shocked at how little progress I've been making. "What the hell is this? I thought you could get these done?" And I wouldn't know what to say. Therefore, I will probably say ... well, "Look, I'm doing the best I can. If you don't like it, well, fire me."
You know, having a drop-dead date changes things. I realized after I blogged about that yesterday that it's only three weeks away -- not too long. As usual I am deeply ambivalent. On the one hand this means the loss of a job, unemployment and the need to look for work once again. On the other hand I won't have to deal with all the crap at work, I can wake up when I want to, I won't have any responsibilities to anyone else and I may even get to stay in during the day if it's too cold out. Shoot, I might just stay unemployed for the winter. So with the stress of doing the right thing comes the freedom of knowing that no matter what you do or don't do, you're losing your job.
So why stress over that? Because I didn't tell him the truth, not necessarily: "We've got a lot of boxes back there." Instead I kind of soft-played the workload: "We've got ... some boxes back there." (OK, I may have outright lied.) That may have led him to think I'm close when I'm definitely not.
I don't really know what he's going to do next week. He may flip out. Or, as he has from time to time, decided he needs to concentrate on all the other stuff he has to do and just let me do my thing. If so, I'll do the best that I can and pray that he doesn't go off on me, again. Well, at that point I may not give a shit.
OK, maybe I'm not so screwed after all. You can do a hell of a lot of things, or not do a hell of a lot of things, when you don't care anymore.
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