Unintended Consequences

So yes, today. I went to work feeling like a condemned man, absolutely bloody dreading it. Just before entering into the office I decided that it was in the interests of my sanity to attempt to broker some sort of peace here; there's only so much you can take, especially when you can't win.

So I sat down and busied myself and when The Boss arrived in I was all "Good morning! How are you today? Take the dog for a walk this morning?" and all this shit. To little effect.

The Boss turns to me and says "I see you tidied the store."

This moment is precarious; it could go either way.

Here's me : "Yes."

The Boss : "Glad to see you did something useful while you were out there huffing."

Nine past eleven, peace talks disintegrated, ceasefire in tatters.

And so it went on. Bitching, silence, general WOE. At around eleven in the morning, The Boss developed A Problem.

The Boss : "The printer isn't printing!"

I look dully at it.

"No. It isn't."

The Boss : "WHYYYYYYYY!???"

Here's me : "I don't know."

I do know though. I've just looked in the print queue and there's 6500 page document jamming it. How in the fuck she managed that I do not know. I remain silent.

So The Boss phoned the IT guy, but he wasn't available. I quietly slipped out and went to lunch, and returned to find The Boss in a state of misery. Which I must admit, did not entirely displease me.

The Boss : "IT'S STILL NOT WORKING?!?? WHAT DO I DO I NEED TO PRINT!??"

Here's me : "dunno"

The Boss : "Can you do something?"

Here's me : "no"

The Boss : "I can't get (the IT guy)"

Here's me : "meh"

The Boss : "Should I phone Thurston!??"

Here's me, suddenly alive : "YES!"

And indeed she did. She phone him and she kept him on the phone for a full half hour, and the snippets of conversation I heard contained such amazing statements as :

"Should I reboot my container?"
"Blocker unblocker keep blocking... Are you ignoring me?"
"Turn it off at the power or at the internet?"

and so on. Stefathurston/Thurstefan, the poor guy, is some sort of credit to his profession and the human race, for despite it being absolutely sweet fuck all to do with him he actually ended up fixing the printer.

Somehow, bizarrely, in the midst of all this, The Boss's mood changed completely, and she emerged from it... changed... once again. She then once again tried to initiate conversations throughout the day and after about an hour or so of this I cracked and by close of business we had both ceased hostilities and even managed to finally go through our joint effort of checking last weekend's lottery numbers.

(We didn't win anything)

So it was ok. Less stressful that I thought it was going to be. And tomorrow's Friday, so fuck it. Why worry.