I work with babies

Today, the office didn't have telecom services. No phones, no internet, no e-mail. However, the intranet was still up, and staff could still work on reports, powerpoint presentations, flyers, etc.

At 9am, I called the telecom company. They'll send someone out, but don't know when. We've been having electrical storms roll through Atlanta every day since last week, so I'm sure there's outages all over the city. We even lost power at the office on Friday for 5 minutes.

Some of my staff turned into babies. All day long, they would ask, did you call? What are we going to do without the phone? I'm going next door to see if they have telecom. They have internet, why don't we? Hey, I'm over at a neighboring office in our office park and a telecom tech is here. Can you call the telecom company and ask them to tell him to come to our office and fix the phones? and on and on all day. It was like having whiny children staying inside on a rainy day. This would be in the days of yore, of course, before video games and other electronic toys. Like the internet.

I had a report to revise. It was 7 pages and I already did the red pen edits Friday. All I had to do type in the edits. It took me all day, because the staff kept interrupting, asking when the technician would be here.

I don't know people! It's not like I secretly have the skills to fix the smart jack (or loop or whatever the telecom company said), but decided not to do it, just to annoy them. For crying out loud!

A few years ago, I was was talking with another executive director and mentioned that I don't have any children. She said, Oh, but you do. You have employees.