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Let’s mark down two o’clock as the continental divide in my march through this particular Monday. Before that time, I was actually saying to myself something to the effect that Mondays weren’t so bad after all. I was thinking that Monday might be one of my five or six favorite days of the week. Then Monday hit its peak and the landslide started.
“I’m back,” the Boss announced when he phoned.
“Yay,” I replied enthooosiastically.
Last week, before he took off for Texas, I had faxed him a list of things I needed from him. All of these were documents I’d mailed to him two to three weeks earlier for his signature. On each one I’d indicated where he was to sign, and asked him to return them to me as soon as possible. I know he realized how important they were, because each one was a renewal application for one of the licenses that keeps us in business.
It’s the nature of the construction game that somebody has to be the Responsible Managing Officer (or at the very least, the Responsible Managing Employee). That means the contractor’s license is in that person’s name, and that person has to be responsible enough not to lose the piece of paper he’s supposed to sign. I don’t know why I thought the Boss would follow my simple instructions. Maybe because he had said, “Just send them to me and I’ll take care of it.”
He didn’t exactly apologize for losing track of the forms. What he said was, “I know it’s hard on you, dealing with people like me.” He doesn’t know the half of it, but I’m sort of leaving it up to him to decide what the next move is. We probably have just enough time to find a way to get the ship righted, as long as we don’t hit the rocks in the meantime. | 
