So as anyone who read my last blog entry knows, I'm currently stuck working every hour God sends thanks to my manager sodding off on holiday.

Anyway, today in our team meeting one of the other statisticians (who I'll call Margaret), reminds us all she is away next week on Thursday and Friday. The dumb bitch actually had the nerve to ask if I (yes me, yes Andy, yes this poor dumb sod who is already working 63 hours a week) would cover her work while she is away (after she had actually declined to help me out while I'm putting the database together). She was oddly surprised when I told her not bloody likely!

So she runs off and tells the other boss about the bad lazy Andy - after all it's only about four hours work she tells me (as if I don't already know, I do the same job you do Margaret). If it was just the end of month figures, then yeah about four hours sounds right; except of course, it is also the end of quarter figures (another four to five hours work on top). So not content with seeing me working 63 hours next week, Margaret grants me the opportunity to work 72 hours - yeah right, where on my face does it say "feckin' eejit here"!

Twenty minutes later, there's a knock-knock on my door, and I get asked why I felt it necessary to tell Margaret where to go and how to get there. So I tell our other boss (who I'll call Suzie) that because my manager has gone off on holiday, I'm stuck setting up the new database on top of my normal workload, so I just don't have the time to spare to help.

Suzie then asks me why I'm doing it, when her understanding was that it could wait until my manager got back from holiday. Well it turns out nobody (i.e. my manager) bothered telling Suzie that the project deadline had been brought forward by a month.

So I get out my mark-10 super-sized special-edition shit-stirring spoon and set it on maximum. After filling Suzie in on everything, and showing her the minutes from our April team meeting when the new deadline was announced (the minutes that say my manager to advise Suzie of the new deadline date), she is now seriously pissed at my manager for not telling her about the project deadline being brought forward. Suzie is usually only responsible for data QA, she doesn't get involved in the day-to-day data and project management side of things (after all that's my manager's job). But since Suzie and my manager cross-cover, Suzie is now responsible for the database set up and any issues are going to be down to her to resolve - welcome to my world!

It seems Suzie would have tried to persuade my manager to either postpone her holiday or take it a month or so earlier if she'd known about the new deadline. Well Suzie (oh Great Brain of Britain), I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess that is precisely why my manager didn't tell you.

As you can guess, my manager also hadn't told Suzie about the insane number of hours I would be working over the next few weeks either, but since Suzie is currently in charge she has decided that I will get paid instead of having to take the time back; so I'll get a nice little holiday out of it all. And boy will I ever need one!

Thanks for listening/reading to me vent. I feel a little better now.