We're Always Counting Apples

Anyone who has ever had a boss or a client is well aware of the experience that I am henceforth naming, "Counting Apples." You might find yourself engaged in counting apples when you get an assignment. Although that assignment might have been given with no perceivable scope or due date, as a good drone, you follow up, asking for more details about what your boss wants. You ask when she needs to see a draft and when she would like the final version completed. If you are persistent, you might get a date; you might even learn that she wants a memorandum.

Then the counting apples begins in earnest. The next day, your boss tells you that the client needs the memo that night and not next week, as she told you after you forced her to give you a due date. When you work yourself to death to turn out something less than stellar but finished, she tells you that instead of a memo, the client wants a chart. Well, obviously, you cannot convert it to a chart by the new due date, but you shouldn't worry because your boss will soon tell you that they don't need it until Friday. You breathe and then begin converting your memo into a chart. On Thursday, boss says that it instead should be a detailed outline with three charts explaining the outline, but you can work on it over the weekend. So there goes your weekend, but by Monday morning, you have a beautifully detailed outline complete with three color-coded charts. When you hand it to your boss, she tells you, with no apparent sense of irony, that the client changed his mind and no longer wants anything. Counting apples.