Optimism is a terrible thing in my profession. Hey, I understand the power of positive thinking and all that shit, but it really has no place in effective resource management. Unfortunately, my boss seems to think that if he wants something badly enough and simply believes, it will happen. This is why he’s always late for meetings – he thinks he can get from Cape Town to Durbanville in ten minutes on faith alone.
He also assumes that the word “urgent” magically speeds up tasks that are typically laborious and time-consuming. Fortunately, it isn’t my arse on the line here, so I can happily skive off until his head explodes. At least that’s some small compensation for having to rewrite some other bastard’s cock-up of a report.
the other side of the mountain 
Perhaps your boss believes in wormholes. Bends in the time/space continuum are fiction to some, but a lifestyle necessity to others.
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The kind of guy that believes that if one baby takes nine months to birth, the if you get nine women together, you can make one in a month. Fucking brilliant. Can you poison his oatmeal?
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@daisyfae: the question is, how can he NOT?
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But watching heads explode is the only job perk actually worth a damn. I’m frequently tempted to slack off just to see who explodes first in our “flat structure heirachy” (Que?).
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but what if he doesn’t eat oatmeal?
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Is that ironic ironic or Alanis Morisette ironic? I never know anymore.
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UB40: I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Naturally, his faith is unshaken by lack of evidence.
daisy: I’m going to need take more drastic steps. I believe his wife has been trying to poison him for years, but he’s become immune.
bracket girl: I am the very soul of restraint.
dolce: Make sure you wear a raincoat.
nursemyra: Then we will force him.
mjw: Neither, it’s dramatic irony. Possibly.
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Bracket Girl? That’s actually not a bad screen name, but Dolce beat you to it with Miss P
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All to familiar to me, he is clearly from another planet and working on the Venus calendar, possibly Mercury or Pluto. By my calculations, next Friday should give you at least 2 earth years to sort it out…
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miss p: Are you sure she wasn’t taking the piss? Uh oh, urine trouble…
beaverboosh: Uranus would make more sense.
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As a freshly minted engineer – many, many moons ago – I kind of bought into a lot of that mumbo jumbo about the “urgency” of projects and trouble shooting and getting the plant back on line as soon as possible.
Even though, I think, it was against my basic nature.
Now that I’ve evolved into pretty much an anti-capitalist, amongst other things, I tend to resist this whole “urgency” thing. I guess I fall into the camp with the motto, “In a million years, none of this will matter.”
Life’s too short to get caught up in “deadlines”, especially those I strongly suspect are artificial. Yeah, I’ve heard the whole “time value of money” speech. But what is money, really? An artificial construct of humans. And, generally, the only ones really worried about “time” and “money” are greedy bastards anyway.
So I say, “fuck them”. I prefer the Mexican mantra, “A mañana”.
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Dolce, taking the piss? I don’t believe she has a wicked bone in her body. Or not when LB is not around at any rate 😉
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That means an answer on Friday nexxxxxt week/in March right?
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