title: Mission: Intractable
category: work
content: |

    <p>You know it's going to be a gloriously lovely and wonderful
    day at work when:</p>

    <ul>
        <li>
            <p>The pager wakes you up too early, and when you log in to
            tackle the problem, those working on it don't even seem to
            acknowledge your existence.</p>
        </li>
        <li>
            <p>You realize a little too late that, on your way into the
            home office to address said problem, the cat urine sitting on
            the plastic runner is now on your slipper because you weren't
            looking where you were stepping.</p>
        </li>
        <li>
            <p>Your cow-orker in another state asks you to process this
            file in production, and attaches to her request neither the
            file itself nor a pointer to where it can be obtained.</p>
        </li>
        <li>
            <p>Said out-of-state cow-orker has a history of not responding
            to requests for further information about a problem in a timely
            fashion -- a history which easily perpetuates itself.</p>
        </li>
        <li>
            <p>HR and IT butt heads very loudly just on the other side of
            one of your cube walls; at least one of them leaves the meeting
            in tears.</p>
        </li>
        <li>
            <p>Your manager calls you into an unannounced meeting to tell
            you of all the new work you've inherited, despite there being
            space in the budget for extra headcount.</p>
        </li>
    </ul>

    <p>At least <a href="http://www.questionable.org/gallery/Sarah">the
    dog</a> had the decency to cooperate with me this morning, even
    if she did require some play time.</p>