See that door? You know what to do.

(The story you are about to read is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocen...er...guilty.)

I had a rough afternoon at work. Two hours yesterday and three hours today were eaten up in preparing a whole heckuva lot of subpoenas for a pain-in-the-neck case. (I was only able to bill for about 1 1/2 hours of that time, but that's beside the point.) My boss had a deposition that lasted a good part of the morning and early afternoon, and she signed my pile of subpoenas just before she left the office for the day at 3:00. At that point, she turned the subpoenas over to one of the other gals--we'll call her Ellen-- to finish up copying and assembling a set for each of the 900 other attorneys involved in the case while I got started on a much more "pressing and time-sensitive" project.

Apparently, someone didn't understand "pressing and time-sensitive." Within minutes of my boss leaving Ellen was back in my office berating me for using Word 2007 to create documents instead of Word Perfect, despite the fact that she is the only person in the office who uses it. And then for not noticing that the lines in the caption were a 1/2 inch too long (WHAT?). And for saving the files in a folder--incidently, the folder they belonged in--that she hadn't thought to check. And for choosing a size 2 envelope for our 80 page packet of papers instead of the too-small size 1 envelope. These subpoenas, already OKed and signed by the boss, were just not good enough for her, but that was not something she was prepared to deal with. No. I had to put aside my "pressing and time-sensitive" project and reformat every stinkin' subpoena or risk her eternal disapproval.

Generally, we get along very well. I'm just glad that no one in the office knows what I look like angry. When I my voice got sort of low and quiet and even and I moved very slowly... they didn't know it was because I wanted to tell sweet little Ellen to back off and stop bothering me with her control issues.

I didn't. I didn't glare, didn't get testy, and didn't let her know just how annoyed I was. I attempted to smile sweetly and explain why there wasn't anything wrong with the way I was doing things. (And then I instant-messaged my mother to whine at her about the situation.) All I know is that Ellen was much happier after she scolded me, and she quickly went back to being her usual cheery self. Crisis averted.