Insert Something

It's been a hectic past couple of weeks. One of my staff has been away on medical leave. You just don't know how much you rely on someone until they wink out on you for a while.

The rest of us have been coping with a bureaucrat's kind of triage where we address the greatest part of the worst and hope for a break in the combat to deal with the rest. 

For example, my boss and I were under the gun to prepare some last minute speaking notes for my boss' boss. We had to put words on the page that were at once crystal clear, technically correct, persuasive as heck and illustrated with pie charts.

So, I got the pie charts from my staff and conferred with them on the technical accuracy of the statements. And we smacked together some prose that to us was both masterfully clear and compelling. Plus we did it in a half an hour or so. 

Proud of our efforts, I e-mailed the work to my boss... who had been called away suddenly and would not be able to review the notes before the end of the day. So much for the heroism of a public servant.

But, later that night while I was making dinner, Bruce called to me and said my infernal device (my Blackberry) had buzzed. My boss had stayed late, reviewed the work and, his e-mail said, had made some revisions that he wanted me to check first thing the next morning. 

I opened the message at my desk around 8 a.m. the following day. This is what I read (note that the actual text has been cleverly disguised so as to honour my oaths of confidentiality and loyalty to the Crown; my boss' changes are highlighted and are just as he wrote them):

"The National Ice Cream Factory Working Group (NICFWG) has been created by the Canadian Council of Ice Cream Ministers to deliver on their direction to insert something. In keeping with this direction, a special workshop has been convened by federal and provincial staff to insert something else."

I laughed so hard I had to go to the bathroom.

Insert photo here.

And have a great week!

Karen