When the Boss started talking about getting me “help” again today, I knew what was coming. More work. He was going to ask me to do more work, while still getting all my old work done. Since I haven’t been very good at getting the old work out on time lately, having new work to do was going to mean actually getting to work. (Shudder.)

It will mean less time not working, which is basically my only problem with the concept. The trouble with getting “help” is that there isn’t any part of what I do that I want to give up. I don’t trust anyone else to do it my way, and it occurs to me that the worry and concern and double-checking might just make my job harder. Nobody wants that, least of all me.

A big part of the problem is the time of year. First of all, everything under the sun happens in July. Quarterly payroll taxes are due. Sales taxes are due. I have an insurance audit coming up later in the month. And everything that I have to do at the beginning of each month has to be done at the beginning of July, right along with all the special stuff. I have so many deadlines that I’m almost certain to miss one somewhere along the way.

And it’s summer. I love the sunshine and the longer hours, which do help me keep going later in the day. But serious summer weather has finally come to the North Bay, and these hot days tend to slow me down. Every time I sit down I stick to the chair. I had to change my shirt in the middle of the day. All I wanted to do was stretch out in front of the box fan, and it took all my reserves of unused will power to keep from giving in.

What the Boss wants is an interim version of the Big Project. You know the Big Project that takes me three months to get done after the end of the year? The one that I obsess over from January through March? He thinks we need to do the same thing from July through however long it takes. He worries that it’s too much for me, but he wants it done. He thinks maybe I need “help.”

And that’s why I have to do it. To prove that I don’t need any help from anybody to do my job, plus the job of those invisible assistants who don’t do my filing, and the data entry that my nonexistent drones don’t do, and the errands of the phantom minions who don’t run off to the post office and the bank and the office supply store day after day after day. I have to do all the tedious grunt work and all the sexy spreadsheet work, because if I don’t, (a) nobody does it, and (2) I prove I’m expendable.

So there you go. Same pay, three times the work. Coal in the stocking. Uphill both ways, for nothing but a crust of bread, and liking it. If only I had a place to air all my complaints, a release valve, a forum that my computer-illiterate boss will never see. Heh.