80 Percent Drive-By

Well, today was a day at work where everything I got – everything, whether it was something I had to do, needed to do, or wanted to do – everything I got from coworkers above me, below me, and at my strata in the food chain, everything I got I only got 80 percent of.

Long-term projects, weekly stuff, super duper important stuff, meaningless CYA stuff, whatever came to me physically, electronically, over-the-phone, was only 80 percent of what I absolutely had to have.

Of course, my deadlines wont be extended to compensate.  I’ll just have to provide extra effort tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, to get that remaining 20 percent to complete my tasks.

Now, if this was an isolated incident, no big deal.  But today – EVERYTHING was – well, see the first paragraph.

The real killer of the 80 percent drive-by (as I’ve come to think of it), is stress, frustration and disengagement.  The mess on my desk grows geometrically as my dismay grows exponentially.  Nothing gets finished, ergo nothing gets put away.  And my incentive to start something new correspondingly falls as the piles of unfinished work upon my desk cry for completion.  Completion that will have to wait for some uncertain time in the near- or distant-future, whenever I can get that final 20 percent.

Ah, the travails and trials of a wage slave!