How I Run My Office

Credenza - Italian, from Medieval Latin credentia, trust (possibly from the practice of placing food and drink on a sideboard to be tasted by a servant before being served to ensure that it contained no poison). See credence.]

The Boss is out of the office and so I just had a pep talk with the guys telling them to be really encouraging about the new credenza, and not in a sarcastic way. Then I gave them some sample lines of dialogue they might want to use to get the Boss more excited about the large piece of furniture I just had dumped into his office this morning. "It's just a piece of furniture," said one guy. "Come on guys, " I said, ignoring him and pumping my fists. "I need a team effort here. And be positive."

My Boss is a busy and important man, but he is also a man who sees fit to file things ... on the floor. His Desk is totally covered in mountains of papers, he has no work space, and he can never find anything. He has plenty of space in his office for some more furniture, so for a couple of months now we've been discussing adding a credenza to his office for his files to free up some desk space and get papers off the floor [okay, I just realized this is the most boring post ever, but I'm going to run with it].

So, after lots of chat, blah, blah, blah, and no action on my Boss's part, I decided, okay, let's do this. I located the company we bought our office furniture from five years ago, had them pull our file, and send us a catalog so we could order a new piece and have it match exactly. But then the Boss had a better idea. Why not contact our parent company, located just a few blocks away, and see if they have anything we could use? For free. So I called the parent company, they have two styles of furniture neither of which sounds like it would match ours, but I said we would set up an appointment for the Boss to go over and see if he liked either.

After two weeks of the Boss not being able to find a minute to go look at the damn credenzas, I volunteered to go furniture scouting while he was in Los Angeles. So I tromped over to HQ to view the samples. As predicted, neither one really matched, but now I was desperate to get a {free} something into that office. Not trusting myself to make a decision, I used my camera phone, to photograph each one. The woman showing me around looked at me like I was shooting flames out my butt, but I didn't want to be responsible when the Boss hated what arrived. I emailed the photos to the Boss so that he could choose himself. He still required some coaching but, settled on choice number 1. I started arranging for delivery.

Yesterday, less than 24 hours before delivery, "C-Day", I got an email saying that the one we chose was not avaliable, nor was the size we selected avaliable, but there was a mystery third option I hadn't been shown that could still be delivered on time. I sent the email to my Boss who was visibly nervous. "Can they send a photo?" he asked. "I don't think so," I said. He put off making a decision.

Delivery was set for this morning at 9:00am. Yesterday at 5:00pm my Boss told me, "I think we should postpone delivery of the credenza until you can go over there and take a look at it." Like. Hell. I. Am.

"Okay," I said. "But I already scheduled it. Now, I can cancel it but ... why don't we give it a try?" Coincidentally, this is the same way I convinced The Joker to accept his new Rolodex. I love these guys, but Cupcake can only swaddle so many tushies.

In related news: I have trained G2 to bring his empty coffee mug into the kitchen, but he puts it in the sink. My next trick will be to get him to put it into the dishwashing machine. I'm like a Doctor Doolittle ... for businessmen.