Yes I did

In the name of "teamwork", my department began to meet every Monday to let people know what our schedules were for that week. Then, to foster communication, we began to meet every morning to set forth the plans for the day as well. And now, we are now expected to write a blurb for a "newsletter" called In the Loop, where we get to recount what we did all week in an effort to keep everyone else buried under the minutae of our workdays.

Because there are only so many ways to say "I will answer / am answering/ have answered phones", I have never taken this last mandate seriously. When asked to send in my blurb for In the Loop, I have submitted Haikus, recipes, and tech support slashfic.

This was my entry for this week, with all apologies to the president-elect:

I know you didn't do this just for customer service and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – software rollouts, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave secretaries waking up with corrupted documents. There are attorneys and paralegals who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll format that pleading, or save their letters, or complete their billing entries on time, every time. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be taken on; new people to train and errors to decipher and installs to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even three months, but IT -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a department will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy we uphold as non-decision-makers, and we know that IT can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of upgrading this office the only way it's been done in this office for twenty years – Desk by desk, secretary by secretary, battered head by battered head.

It really is a shame that no one in our department read the damn things.