“Nothing of note happened today.”

So wrote Louis XIV in his personal diary, on the day his subjects stormed the Bastille. (Or so I remember, and right now I’m too lazy to look it up.) Anyway, that’s basically the story of my day at The Store today, except that I rediscovered an old affliction that you’ll find in every manager on Earth: when they assume a job will “just take a couple of minutes”, plan on an hour. It’s sort of the reverse of the “Miracle Worker” thing I mentioned a few weeks back, the difference being that if the manager asks you for a time-estimate, you can play the “Miracle Worker” game; but if the manager already has a time estimate in mind, get ready, because you’re likely to end up looking like a clod.

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