It doesn't take much to set me off in the morning. I am not a morning person.

Someone driving with annoying slowness in rush-hour traffic, one of those stupid SUVs in front of me with a back windshield angled just right to blind me with sun-glare. Sometimes it's just stupid little things and I know I'm being silly.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to be annoyed if my phone rings first thing in the morning and there's a machine on the other end - a machine telling me that it has a call for me but that all of its humans are busy, so could I please hold on.

Working from home (which I did yesterday, because of the storm) is not the picnic it seems to be. If you can't VPN into your office network (and I can't), then mostly all you can do is respond to e-mails or phone calls. I got 48 actual business e-mails yesterday and today I'm trying to fight my way out of the pile of problems those generated, along with all the other work I needed to get done yesterday but couldn't get to until I was back in the office.

The client that's been being the most annoying recently (did I mention that yesterday they sent us yet a third job that just had to be done before noon today?) continues on form. The information I'm supposed to have no later than two weeks before their event, meaning this past Wednesday at the absolute latest, is not here, in spite of the fact that I started bugging them about it in mid-September.

Also, I made rather a blunder this morning. This same client responded to an e-mail I sent, giving them some stats on a program we did. They hit reply and said, 'this is working well, let's try it again with a new title and send it to the same people." And so I redid it with a new title and sent it back out to the same people.

Except that the client actually meant let's send, not this program, but the one we did yesterday, and not to these people, but the ones we wrote to yesterday.

My inability to read minds is sometimes a real handicap in the business world.

Then Bernie called up in a panic because he hasn't told this client we're using a new system and he didn't want me to tell her but the client had already called me and since I didn't know he was stringing her along, I told her that part of the problem was that we're using a new system (true) and that I wasn't completely familiar with it (true). Not over-informing her in catastrophic detail, but borderline. He spent fifteen minutes arguing with me about the only thing the client has not complained about this week, then fifteen minutes explaining in excruciating detail how I should call her, what I should say, and how I should answer if she asks any of a dozen questions. I gave the matter some thought, then dropped him an e-mail and told him to call her himself.

Also, Bernie's database idea is not working. He doesn't seem to have allowed for the fact that our clients' client lists change on a daily basis. (Scooby, the guy he hired to build and maintain the database on a free-lance, part-time basis, is actually only available every other weekend, and then part of the time every other week.) If comprehensive, up-to-the-minute client databases were easy, everyone would do them. We need to be able to pull an updated mailing list any time we need one. And we need to pull one for every job. Scooby is not available every day, leaving me, doing it manually, as the only real option. And if I get one more project that involves maintaining the mess instead of doing some actual work, I won't be responsible for the consequences.

By now I'm well into midday rage and things show no sign of improving.

P.S. If you're looking for me, my personal e-mail is down due to a server crash. Their web note says it may be tomorrow before it's fixed.