for the rest of you, i'm making you look at this. this looney toons situation.

quick context: a while back, my company acquired a software from a firm. this software handles a different type of government compliance filing than anything we've ever seen at this company to date. so no one here knows how to process them, except for me kind of, our c?o, daniel, and one of the firm's employees, emily.

daniel is out of the country this week and last week. this is important. before daniel left, he told me to try to handle our first of these filings if i could, and to get emily on the phone for as much help and as long as i needed. i said okay because i made assumptions about emily's availability.

emily was out of office on monday, when the first filing came in. she has been out of office all week. so both daniel and emily are gone and i'm floundering. i do what anyone does in the first two hours of having a task they don't know how to deal with and are responsible for, which is Have A Panic Attack.

over the course of monday and tuesday, most of the company got involved in this somehow. someone sat with me while i processed the first filing, and on tuesday i asked my boss what i should do because i would be out on wednesday (today) after noon because i had an endoscopy scheduled and it was Difficult To Schedule. she got HR involved, who got the CEO involved, and the cfo and i went on a walk and i told him about it. so everyone's laughing in disbelief that i managed to deal with this filing when no one at our company knew anything about it and anyone who DID know anything about it was completely gone and unreachable.

however.

this filing that i did was wrong before it ever graced my hands. i won't bore you with describing the many, many ways in which it was completely fucked, some of which were my fault (in that i didn't know what i was doing), some of which were absolutely not. so we (another employee at the firm, atticus, and i) contact the government. the government tells us to file a withdrawal, and then re-file the original documents Fixed. we're like okay great we'll do this tomorrow, and i leave the office and go try to relax because i know it's going to be a nightmare to figure out how to file a withdrawal.

7 am i wake up and i get on early to make sure this gets done on time because i have to leave at 12 PM MT for a Medical Procedure. due to My Stomach Has Been Doing Ulceric Things For 3 Months Because Of The Job.

atticus asks if i understand what must be done. i do. he goes "great." i process the withdrawal form in the software we got from his firm.

one thing to know about this software is that it was developed in the early 2000s and hasn't been touched since. it is 20 years old. if you make a mistake, you have to process the whole damn thing again. so i'm invested in making sure i have to do that as little as possible.

atticus has sent the withdrawal letter and the other filing to the government to ask if they're fine, before i'd gotten online. the government responds and says we need to make slight edits to the withdrawal letter. atticus asks me if i can do it. company policy is that we don't make edits to client documents. i give it a shot anyway for the sake of time and because i asked my boss and she was like Shrug.

my adobe version is too old to have anything more than a very rudimentary font change option so it destroys the justification. i tell atticus i cannot do it and that he needs to make the edits. he says "okay it will have to be after lunch." i go What. I Told You Yesterday I Would Be Out After 12 PM Mountain Time. Due To My Endoscopy.

i decide to try to process the second form since the information is exclusive from the withdrawal form. i decide it should be ready as fast as possible. but i have some questions so i ask atticus to confirm the links i would need to process the second document. he says "we need to do the withdrawal first." he does not respond to my question.

he emails again a few minutes later and says "we might have to do this tomorrow." i say okay that's fine by me, i am going to get ready for my Medical Procedure and then when i'm done i will make sure i'm prepared to tackle this tomorrow. he emails back five minutes later. "actually we need to do this today."

i text my boss and say "it needs to be done today. if it can't get done today because atticus's out till after lunch, what do we do." my boss gets someone else on the phone with a newer version of adobe and i watch them make the edits to the withdrawal. i process the new withdrawal. i send it to atticus.

atticus asks if the tariff version numbers are correct. i say "atticus this type of filing doesn't have those. you are thinking of the other filing." he says "but we need to make sure the tariff version numbers are correct." i say "yes atticus i will but i'm asking for your feedback on the withdrawal." he does not respond. it is 10am. i am off at 12pm.

my boss tells me to call him and tell him i'm off at 12 pm, so i call him. it goes to voicemail. as i'm leaving a voicemail he sends another email. i don't even remember what it said. i send an email to the government, asking a question. in the meantime i start processing the second document using the links i had asked him to confirm that he had not.

throughout this process, atticus has been reiterating that it's very important we get the filing right this time. so i'm double- and triple- checking and asking every question that comes up as much as i can to ensure that i get everything right. i am counting on atticus to make sure he looks these over before telling me that they are good to file.

atticus calls me back at 10:30a. he goes "i'm at disney world with my family."

i cannot understate. the rage. i felt. to hear the words disney world.

"do you want me to file these when they're done," i say.

"yeah, if you could that would be great. i'm trying not to go back to my computer at all today."

sir.

you are.

ON THE CLOCK.

at DISNEY WORLD?

DISNEY WORLD?

i finally get him to confirm the links and i process the second filing. there is an error with the test filing. i contact a different division of the government branch to get help, because the error does not inform me what was wrong, only that they had straight out rejected my document. they open a ticket but do not help me. i go looking for the problem myself. Raw Ampersand. i remove it. the document is fixed and the angels sing my praises.

i painstakingly proof my own work. i am crosschecking 3 or 4 different resources to ensure correctness. atticus emails. "are we ready to file yet." he still hasn't looked at the withdrawal i sent him for his approval. he does not look at anything. he is atticus.

i finish up and send him screenshots of the document in the software because this software doesn't spit out anything a normal human person can read. this is also painstaking. i send him the screenshots and the code. i say "please proof this carefully for any errors and let me know if it's okay to file."

it takes him 15 minutes to get back to me, from what i assume is the top of splash mountain. "i am away from my computer but from what little i can see on my phone this looks good. send it."

the buffoon. the imbecile.

i file them both anyway, with chattering teeth because i have just installed the Anxiety OS on my system. and because i am godly, they are actually correct this time.

i clean up my inbox and log off, because it is 15 minutes past when i was supposed to log off and i need to get myself ready. for my Medical Procedure. "thanks!" david says. then, one minute later, "we have another filing tomorrow"