Not that I haven't had my own moments of stupid this week. I fought one of our proprietary software programs to the wall because the program I coded wasn't working. Turns out I mislaid a comma in a logic statement. Color me embarrassed.

Still.

Buehler, who doesn't normally annoy me at all, wanted me to print stuff for him today because he doesn't have access to the color printer and I'm all, "okay, no problem" until he gives me the URL, at which time I informed him that it is no part of my job to print out his porn, even if it does look better in color. (Who knew that http://www.supermodelinc.net/ was a site to buy doggie beds?)

Later he required more assistance because the pages did not come out of the printer. I investigated and explained to him that, while it would be a cool feature, printers do not yet make their own paper as they go and it is necessary to load blank paper into the little bin in order to get the machine to produce copies.

I spent 45 minutes writing up instructions so that the genius program developer would know how to get into the server to look for my missing data. If he can't get into the server without my assistance, I have little faith he'll be able to work technology magic and retrieve my files.

Our e-mail continues to come and go, choke and relax, at irregular intervals throughout the day, just as both it and our internet access have been doing for the last ten days. I'm pretending not to notice.

I've spent 12-3/4 hours on "tech" stuff this week, not including little interludes like the one mentioned above - significantly more than I've spent doing anything for any client.

Should I manage to free myself from the coils of technological malfunctions, I can always put on my Human Resources hat and go out and find myself a new insurance provider. Bernie's wanting to switch to his wife's policy on the first but he's not sure if our current carrier will let him have a small business policy with just me on it. If they won't, he says it's up to me to find my own insurance carrier and he'll pay up to the dollar amount he's paying now.

Failing that, I can put on my Office Manager hat and go find heavier boxes for shipping our products since those last two shipments came back crushed. Or find stickers we can run through a color printer that are permanent when applied to cheap plastic and have transparent backgrounds. Or return product components we bought that didn't work. Or hassle the building management because our suite isn't getting vacuumed and we pay for cleaning.

The one thing I can be fairly certain of about today is that I will have no time to work with any of our actual clients. My actual title, if anyone was wondering, is "Account Executive." I was hired, if anyone cares, because I have ten years of account management experience. Because working with clients is what I'm good at.

Naturally I'm thrilled to spend my time on hardware repair, software troubleshooting, and office supply ordering.

In fact, I'm just thrilled.