Almost yelled (well, maybe “almost” isn’t accurate…I think I did yell) at one of the project managers at work when he started interrogating me about a release that I’d only just learned about a day or so previously. Everything is due the first week of June. It’s the second week of April. It’s an update release. Chillax.
I had sent the French version of the document out for a full edit in February — it was a mishmash of the work of several different translators and translator-wannabes and it would be nice to get it consistent with the English — and it’s due back at the end of April. The PM freaked out over that. April 30 was the original due date but the transation office thought it might come back earlier. Turns out she was wrong; they’re swamped by year-end crap from other offices. Regardless, end of April is not a huge deal. Doesn’t stop me writing the English stuff. And there isn’t likely to be 4 weeks worth of new French stuff to send out for translation. So he’s getting upset over nothing. But he stills wants a detailed timeframe for everything and doesn’t understand that I can’t tell him what I don’t know. Translation time is based on word count and I won’t know the word count until I’ve actually written it, which I can’t do until they stop dickering over the details of the planned changes. And I don’t know how much work the stuff that is currently being edited will be when it comes back — it may just be a day or two of copying, pasting, and checking or it may be a week or more; it depends on just how bad the original really was. When I sent it out, there was no June release on the horizon (in fact, we’d just sent one out). There are other sources of crankiness on that particular project that didn’t help raise my mood, though I shouldn’t let them bother me. (Note to self: there’s a good lesson to learn. Think “Serenity Prayer”.)
So he got cranky and I got crankier. That never ends well, for me at least. That was shortly before I left work and part of the reason why I wasn’t into a suitable mood for the psychic fair. And part of why I am stressed out now (oh, there are so many reasons for me to be stressed out right now and almost all of them my own damned fault).
Life Begins at 41...or maybe 43 