28th June, 2002.
Horrific week, full of lots of delightful end-of-financial-year madness (almost enough to warrant a website in its own right). Bowing to the inevitable realisation that there were too many deadlines for me to meet them all, I was forced to delegate some of it to the Cow-orker. This had it's good side, of course, as it gave her a taste of what I deal with on a daily basis and quickly saw her reduced to stressed and gibbering wreck as her precious personal phone call time was reduced to a mere shadow of its former self.
There were a couple of unfortunate side effects, though, one of which was that she was talking to many more clients than is normally the case. Several times this week I've found myself holding my head in a mixture of pain and embrassment at some of the things I've heard pass her lips, espeically the ones that she attributes as having been something I've told her. The conversations where she told the clients that (in essence) "We have to do things this way because you guys suck at your jobs" were particularly cringe-worthy.
Another downside has been her realisation that she was actually working (why, she was reduced to a mere two hours of personal phone calls a day!), a fact she's felt obliged to share with friends, family, clients, suppliers and workmates (basically anyone she came into contact with who had a pulse).
In fact she'd tire herself so much by telling people how busy she was that she'd invariably need a coffee break after each conversation to stop her head spinning with the sheer business of it all...