Sorry? I can't hear you! Can you speak up??

It seems I was harsh in my rush to judgement with regards Stephen's sore throat. He sounded like a dalek yesterday (and spent all day going round saying "Exterminate" in a truly hilarious impersonation...), and woke up with a cold this morning. By lunchtime full blown man-flu had set in, so he came home to wallow in self pity. He's normally quite resilient so he isn't good at being ill...which means that I'll be driven insane in a couple of days!!

I had a nice surprise in work today. A British contractor dropped into the office with a couple of bars of cadburys. He was over on vacation and we weren't expecting him, so it really was a surprise, but a welcome one!!

The rest of the day went downhill! Mr Wrongkindofbeer committed the cardinal office sin of having a conference call on speaker phone with his office door open. He's loud and I could clearly hear every word of both sides of the conversation. I can sometimes tune it out, but I was doing monthly reporting today (giant spreadsheet - lots of analysis) and it requires a lot of concentration. I couldn't do it. I had to decant into Paul's office and shut the door (firmly!), then pop my way through a load of bubble wrap. It was the giant bubble kind for superior stress relief!

As I was working through, trying to get the report finished I asked Joni if one of my colleagues could cover the phones at lunchtime. She called him. He agreed. It was about 20 minutes later Dawn stuck her head in the door asking if I'd seen him...it turned out that he had "popped downstairs to get something to eat" and left the phones unanswered. Surely not the point of agreeing to take the phones. As he wasn't around I took them, but of course wasn't at my own desk so had to keep running back and forward to get numbers etc. I was annoyed as I take the phones every day, and the one day I didn't (as I wanted to work!) he got bored and wandered off!! See, I told you...I was grumpy!! Everything was getting on my nerves!!!

I joked that I needed a sign for the front of my cube...and as I had just been to the zoo (and it was definitely like a zoo in the office today!) it should read something like this...

Kerry

Latin name: Grumpyus Bitchius

Habitat: Bars, restaurants, tropical islands and the little cube outside President’s office

Diet: Is especially fond of chocolate bars and liquidised Mango and rum drinks.

Kerry is generally kind, warm and fuzzy but at certain times can display ogreish behaviour and become irritable and short tempered. These periods of irritability generally coincide with the preparation of the month end reports and are exacerbated by loud noise and inefficiency. During these periods we advise that the public APPROACH WITH CAUTION as she has been known to bite. Extreme caution should also be exercised early each morning as she has been known to savage people before she has been fed her latte.