Morning's Light

…and there's this deadline today at 9:30 AM.  Must get SM (senior manager) out the door to a critical meeting with two originals + eight copies of contracts and backup documents to distribute.  Two of us are working with him to get final corrections completed and copies made and sorted into piles to be finalized.

It's chaos. Paper is everywhere. Piles are, well, piling up. There's yelling amongst the three of us and The Person Who Pushes My Buttons (TPWPMB) just stands there, mezmerized… and is not contributing one darn thing. 

SM finds an older document he needs to take with him. There's no time to make copies.  So I copy the cover sheet of both sections, with a note to self to make additional originals for the file.

TPWPMB moves closer to me and tells me to make copies of the covers of each document and says she'll remind me to print out the originals.  I was in the middle of doing just that (making copies) and tried to look up and formulate a response but no words exited my mouth. 

[If my friend Kathleen had been here, she would have said the same thing she says to her three year old son, coaxing him to "use your words!!" when he's got strong emotions and doesn't know how to communicate what is wrong.  USE YOUR WORDS.  I needed to hear that.]

I look up at TPWPMB and look down at the copier and keep going.  It's not worth it to cause a scene and ask TPWPMB to please continue answering phones so that the group of three of us can continue finishing this project.

However, my blood began boiling (a little bit) after all was said and done and SM was out the door, documents in hand. 

How does it help anything to stand there, gawking, and wanting to order people around, but we're fine on our own, thank-you-very-much??!

breathe.  just breathe.