Santamas

Good after-morning!

I hope you had a pleasant break and such, if you did indeed have one. I had a quiet one myself, but quite nice.

So anyway I'm alone in here today, The Boss had some days off left to use (a fact which I find highly suspicious, but never mind) and so is sitting at home sticking bits of newspaper clippings to the walls or whatever it might be that she gets up to on her days off. Several things will happen, pretty much without fail, when The Boss is off. The first is that she will phone me at around 9.05 in the morning, largely I suspect to check that I'm in the office (fair enough) - she will ask me if everything is alright, and I will try to get her off the phone as quickly as possible. She will then call back at around ten in the morning as she remembers various things that she 'needs done'. This could be almost anything, and it's kind of like a game; the tasks will be hidden at various locations around her desk and the office itself - I mean, my desk is ok, occasionally it has a few more rizla packets lying on it than is strictly professional but for the most part it's quite tidy, but The Boss's desk, as you can imagine, is this scene of unmitigated horror, it's Project Fucking Mayhem over there -

The Boss : "Can you do a rate for Martin. Mark. Keenan. Ronan. To Piraeus, Limassol. From Portbury. Southampton. Tilbury. Dublin. Can you get it from Cork. It's in the file, but not in the file. Not in the file itself. See if you can get it."

This is how arguments start, y'know.

Here's me : "Uh, seriously, I have no idea what you're talking about, just so you know; I mean, if you come in here tomorrow and ask me why I haven't done this, it's because I haven't a single fucking clue what you're on about."

The Boss : "I sent you an e-mail about it last week!"

Here's me : "Did you?!? When?!?"

The Boss : "Before we left on Christmas Eve."

Can you dig this. We were both sitting here on Christmas Eve and The Boss at some stage that day e-mails me about something she'll need done on 30th December; I mean, apart from the obvious 'why didn't you just do it yourself, instead of e-mailing me?' there's also the fucking crazy notion of e-mailing someone who sits across the room from you to tell them to do some work for you next week... ok, never mind, anyway -

Here's me, looking through my e-mail, and I can't see anything that seems to be instructions from The Boss. There is one titled "SANTA", but I assumed this was just some sort of Christmas-spam-bollocks-wank of the type that The Boss loves to forward, you know, the sort of e-mail that goes around in Comic Sans and tells you to spread the joy and goodwill or else your knob will fall off, so I sez : "I can't see anything from you except some 'Santa' e-mail?"

The Boss : "That's it!"

Here's me : "-"

Indeed, on closer inspection, the innocuously titled 'SANTA' e-mail, sent on Christmas Eve, is actually a lengthy missive of instructions from The Boss, which she has sat and typed to me while we were in the office together on Christmas Eve, and I now paste for your perusal :

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Sorry about this


The middle file on my desk is all the Shipments. Can you please look at
the following 2 urgently at least


Vessel : Santa something????
Shipment due in around 30/01/09 is arranging customs / delivering Bill of Lading. Can you please ask (Number inside of file) to let us have delivery notification / invoice. Charges are written inside of file as we dont have credit please ask to forward payment. Also raise an invoice to forwarding - no release until Bill of Lading / Payment has been received/ Please also ask Umesh for details again.


Dublin - 


Container arriving in around 30th / 31st December. Ask Dublin for
invoice or at least rate of exchange. Raise an invoice to name
on file. I have also sent her an email with charges. Again check and see
if we have credit - if not please ask to pay this one asap as well.


Thanks and
all being well, see you Thursday


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I mean, I feel stupid now. I should have known that a 'SANTA' e-mail sent on Christmas Eve referred to a vessel (the 'Santa Catalina', I have since found out, should you care) and not the fat God-lookalike in the red suit. If anyone, anyone, can tell me, even approximately, just what the hell I should be doing, I will buy you a large drink. Yes, the above makes no more sense to me than it will to you, which is to say it makes not one fucking iota of sense at all.


On another note, thank y'all very much for the many comments & kind wishes and so on - you rock.