Oh joy. The boss called me and asked if I'd be willing to work on my day off. I asked, "What time?" to which she sheepishly responded, "All day." That makes this a seven day week for me. (Laughing here) I told her I would work and then I hung up the phone and told myself I didn't want to work tomorrow. (Laughing again)

Employees whining when presented with reasonable responsibilities and expected outcomes, customers getting impatient when I call for help or equipment for them on the radio or loudspeaker or both and no one coming, mistakes being made by the employees causing inconvenience to the customer and embarrassment to the company, employees stretching their breaks, spending time talking and trying to avoid work, figuring out payroll, writing checks and a host of other things too mundane to record here.

Most of these things I deal with already on a day to day basis, but when there is no one else to rely on for help to get through it, the day can be more taxing with the increased responsibilities. Since the boss depends on me regularly to see to it that most of these things are either accomplished or avoided, and my usual responsibilities are also expected to be achieved while she is gone, I had no choice but to "shift" and "delegate." It was a long week. I felt like much more of a babysitter than I normally do.

Last Wednesday our newest employee decided to enter a "slump," and really got on my nerves. I gave him a specific task which he blew off. I told him to get with it but he knew that I had distractions to keep me busy elsewhere, so he kept slacking off. I kept following through until he got under way. This project should take him a day or so to complete, depending on the frequency of customer interruptions and today, he is only 1/4 of the way through. Today I told him that the boss wanted to know how much he had accomplished on the project and he suddenly picked up his pace. It seemed like this might be the first time he ever realized that what he does or doesn't do might be important to the boss.

I have expressed to the boss when asked by her, in the strongest terms, that this man needs to find another place to do what he calls, "work," because he and I have different ideas about what that is. I'm not being sarcastic here. He thinks work is where he spends time and does what he feels is not too taxing for him and that he should collect pay for that. I think work is a privilege and an opportunity to excel at what you get paid for.

The nice thing is though, the Lord sort of puts things in perspective for me while I go through this sort of thing. Like it or not, incompetence is rampant, and although anyone can make a mistake, (I certainly make my share) it's up to believers to own up to theirs and set a proper workplace example for those we work with, and those we work for.