The (Failed) Pursuit of Excellence

The Boss : "Can you add up a spreadsheet for me?"

I am kind of impressed and pleased, to be honest - this beats the shit out of being handed a chicken-scrawl on the back of an envelope, the usual method of accounting round here.

Here's me : "Yeah, sure. What needs doing?"

The Boss : "Just the totals for each column, then the grand total, and an average across each month."

Here's me : "No bother at all. Where is it?"

The Boss : "On your desk."

Here's me : "Um... you mean on the desktop?"

The Boss : "No, I left it on your desk."

True enough, there it is. Twelve columns and thirty-six rows of tiny wee numbers squeezed onto one A4 hardcopy. I have a bad feeling about this.

Here's me : "Where's the original?"

The Boss : "Don't worry about that, just do it from that."

Here's me, creaking under tension : "Um... if you will just tell me where you saved the file, this will take me about ten seconds, and will contain no errors. If you want me to add this up manually, it will take me an hour, and it will contain several errors."

The Boss : "I don't want you do it that way."

Here's me, staring into the abyss : "You... want me... to add this up.. manually?"

The Boss : "Yes."

Here's me : "......"

Here's me : "WHY?!??"

The Boss : "To make sure there's no mistakes"

Here's me : "That's fucking insane"

The Boss : "If you don't want to help me that's fine"

Here's me : "I have no problem helping you. None. But are you seriously asking me to add this up manually when you've already typed all the figures into Excel? Fortheluvvafuckinggod, WHY??"

The Boss : "TO. MAKE. SURE. THERE. ARE. NO. MISTAKES."

Here's me : "THERE. ARE. MORE. LIKELY. TO. BE. MISTAKES. THIS. WAY. ARE. YOU. MAD."

The Boss : "I've deleted the file anyway."

Here's me on the fucking knife-edge : "You are mad. This is mad. Let's just do it the sensible, normal, usual, sane way that a sane person would do it. I can recover the file, look."

The Boss : "It doesn't matter."

Here's me : "Eh.. what?"

The Boss : "It doesn't matter. Don't bother."

Here's me : "Are you... having some kind of... strop, or something, over this LUNACY?"

The Boss : "No. If you're going to take the huff over it, don't bother."

Here's me :