Short-timer's syndrome

Only one more day before we fly to Paris.

But here I'm still embroiled in work. I have a maintenance contract in the renewal process that has become snarled up because a lawyer has decided a clause needs to be deleted - despite the fact that this contract has been renewed three times already, over the past nine years, with the clause intact.

I have a key staff vacancy due to extended medical leave, and her desk will be staffed by a temp while I'm gone.

A client has requested a service my company provides, though so rarely I've never actually done it since being trained four years ago. I have three days one hour to get the paperwork together and make the request - or provide instructions for the temp to complete the task while I'm gone.

My office has provided some administrative help to another department. We just completed a step in a multi-stepped project. Can the next step wait until I return?

Lunchtime, I'm at my desk with a sandwich, reading tour books. A coworker asked me - Are you excited? Are you packed already?

At four o'clock another task lands on my desk. Go back and analyze some data for the previous year, crunch sideways, lay it out in a table. We need it tomorrow morning.

Sign off this form. Log on to the Finance module and enter a Request for Warrant, or search the General Ledger. Answer the phone. No - I'm not available next week!

Clean off the desk. Email clients to touch base one last time.

Click the box saying "Turn on Out of Office Assistant.

Au revoir!