Got my bossy britches on

This week in a Small Town Newsroom

Wakeen fell asleep at his desk the other afternoon. It was pretty slow, and we were just sitting around talking when Violet and I heard this noise coming from his desk. We both turned and looked, and he had his chin to his chest, sawing logs. He did wake up after a few minutes, but dear heavens.

Sadly, I don't have an update for this. Most of my phone conversations are very short. I had one the other day that was 10 minutes long. He talked the entire time. I finally get him my email address, a feat unto itself, and he asks my name again. I have a very girl's popular name. It is easy to spell. He pronounced it when he repeated it back to me without one syllable, which I don't love, but is how a lot of older people say it. I don't love it, but ok. He then tells me it's unusual for a lady to have that name, and he doesn't know anyone with that name. I am unsure what he heard that sounds like my name, and very much is not.

Everyone at the office is sick. As soon as someone leaves for the day, I descend with the Lysol. A lady in advertising saw me carrying it, and told me her husband had the flu. I did not give in to my first instinct of spraying her with the Lysol.

Farquad isn't here today, he was fine yesterday morning, and then yesterday afternoon, started coughing. It's horrible when he coughs, because it literally sounds like he's hacking up a lung. I was expecting him to vomit any second. It was disgusting.

Yesterday, Boss was out, so I was in charge of putting together the front. It was stressful, but I was doing ok until about ten minutes before deadline. That's when we found out advertising hadn't put in the right pages, and we had to change all the ads. That wasn't fun.

Some of the boys, though, have no idea how close they came to death. Farquad wants to be in charge, but isn't willing to do any of the work. Fergus came and stood right behind me, while chewing his yogurt. I cannot stand to hear people chew, and he was right behind me. He was also talking to Violet about robots for... ahem, adult entertainment. I almost turned around, killed him, and went right back to work.

Wakeen, however, was the worst. I was asking him where the pictures I needed were. He says he doesn't know how to get there from his desktop. I told him to click on the file icon. Nope. I said the file button, which was a mistake, because he started looking at his keyboard. I finally gave up and went and glowered over his shoulder until he found it. He was then shocked that I didn't have enough room for more than one photo.