random thoughts – Day 1,919 – (Wednesday) –brownies and miracles

It was a full day at the office in both hours and staffing. Our fourth floor team had a potluck and it was a ton of pastries and donuts, fresh made Belgian waffles, French toast casserole, fruit, and a spectacular quiche with homemade crust that was devoured in minutes. 

Brownie contest!!

As if the feast wasn’t enough, the first floor suite hosted a brownie competition with nine entries lined up for sampling and voting. The one I voted for (entry #8) had chopped walnuts and some wonderful undertones and flavors and it won, but unlike horse racing, there was no prize money for picking the winner. Bummer. 

We ate so much today that we really needed naps afterward, but that wasn’t possible, because, well, we were at work. When I rule the world, adults get naps. Not kidding. We will also be allowed to take all the naps the toddlers refuse. No nap will wither and die from neglect.

The afternoon was busy-ish with some cross-training with colleagues who are not being axed on June 30. There were more short-notice requests that landed in our laps outside the long-ago established procedures which make me wish we could just say, “nope” (or more accurately, “are you frigging kidding me, no effing way!”). But we can’t say that, and instead we smile (though gritted teeth), respond with “we'll do our best,” (after deleting the aforementioned phrase from the email) and then two or three or however many of us huddle, strategize, reshuffle the deck, tap dance, maybe swear a little, beg for the rest of the critical info not provided with the original request, and then pull off yet another miracle which goes largely unacknowledged. 

This has become a daily event over the past couple weeks. The problem is, once you pull off that first miracle, suddenly that becomes the expectation. And boy, people seem to expect a lot. Plus they talk and tell their colleagues how fast they got something and then everybody expects a two-hour turnaround on a two-week project.

But then we go and taste brownies and things feel a lot better, and things get done, and at least we can feel good about our secret superpowers that let us get the stuff done, no matter how unreasonable. I need to figure out how to make that a resume bullet.