I'm not at work

I'm not at work, and yet I have answered three phone calls from there this morning, with one more surely to come today, if not tomorrow.

I'm not mad, though.

At the beginning of the year, I created this huge Excel report that probably should've been done in Access (except no one [read, "my boss"] wanted to send me to Access training, not even when I asked for it in a well-written memo) so that we could track the process of hiring a million and one employees of a specific classification we have been tasked to hire by the powers that be. That's an awkward, vague sentence, but it's an awkward, vague world. You know what I am saying, sort of. (I just read an "essay" my friend Michael wrote on his "online journal" where he pretty much filled up a bunch of space by writing all his sentences backwards, and as annoying as that could've been, it actually made me laugh, and start to feel it a little. See, I almost wrote, "Saying am I what know you." Michael Dane, you may have something there. Or, I am your target audience. Pick one).

Anyway. So I created this complicated report with filters and labels and colored tabs and I knew it was complicated (but it does what it needs to do, and frankly, I'm proud of it) but since I have started to explain and give detailed instructions to the person (her name is Lisa, and she's quite competent, just maybe a tiny bit overwhelmed. Join the club, babe) who will be in charge of it now that I am leaving my current job, I'm a little worried that it's overly complicated.

Except it really isn't. Sure, maybe there's an easier way to do it. Sure, maybe Access would keep track of the information in any more readily accessible manner (ah ha! Access - accessible... I get it now) or maybe it would, but once I learned Access, I would be one of only two people in my office who know Access (the other one is my boss, who already irritates me with her, "I could do this better" pronouncements about this and other things that I do. Really? Then WHY DON'T YOU? I am always shocked when she says stuff like that, and I wonder in what leadership training she heard that these types of statements were a good idea), and how would that be better or easier for anybody? There are multiple things that we need to track, and this report was created at a moment of stress: we were being audited, the auditors were there (literally, there, at my desk), I had little time to finesse it. It is what it is, and for me, the creator*, it works just fine.

On Thursday I sat down with Lisa for an hour, and we went over everything, including a 9-page instruction pamphlet I started making last week, complete with screen shots and definitions, and I'm happy to take her calls. It doesn't feel much like a vacation yet, but that's okay. We stayed up late last night watching the Olympics, I slept in and (in between calls from Lisa) read, plucked my eyebrows, and watched TV - I'm not at work and that's what counts. Right? That's what counts.

*I am THE CREATOR. That's pretty funny, right there.