Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Saved by The Universe

I believe I mentioned that Napolean was in town. This usually isn't good news. And, up until about 15 minutes before I left today, I thought it was a par for course as far as bossman.

But don't forget, The Universe acts in mysterious ways.

Napolean decided he wanted to change the semantics of one of our major descriptions of our product. No big deal - except of course that I had just signed off on our printed brochure. Like yesterday. I sighed, I protested, I made a big show of how much this would rain on my parade. He insisted.

So, I called the printer and cancelled the job. I emailed the designer and told her to "Stop the Presses - Call Me!" She did. We started to walk through the changes one at a time, hoping to make them on the fly and re-submit the files to the printer.

It was then that we realized that one of the two files had a huge chunk of text missing. Which, by the way, just happened to be one of the major competitive differentiators of our product.

Of course, I can now spin this that the changes Napolean requested threw us off our deliverables deadline. And no one is the wiser that I actually signed off on and submitted a HUGELY flawed file to press.

It doesn't seem like a big deal but, with a boss who is super duper anal retentive in his management of me and has mentioned ad naseum that I "don't pay attention to detail" this is the difference between a bigtime probationary period and a decent review.

Thank you, Oh Universe. I can only guess that somehow, someway, something I did karmically paid off. Isn't life grand?

A Royale with Cheese

This makes me sad. Even though McDonalds was my first employer, and even though a MickyD's chicken sandwich with BBQ sauce will be the first thing I eat if I ever fall of the veghead bandwagon, it truly saddens me that their profits are rising while a frighteningly large number of people don't know what my "Eat More Kale" bumper sticker means. (Hint: It's not dirty. It's a leafy grean, people, with lots of iron for us gals...)

I have a lot more to say on that topic, coupled with the passage of the recent Farm Bill (shame on you Dems!) and, of course, this article on why it's just not as simple as eating locally, shopping at a farmers' market, or belonging to a CSA. I have a lot more to say, but I won't bore you.

Not to mention, Napolean is in town and its only a matter of time before he sneaks up behind my cube and says, "Whacha doin?"