Maybe I've had it wrong all these years. Apparently part of my job is to pick up the phone once or twice a week and take a verbal beating over something I can't control. I don't know why it has to be about insurance, a subject that makes my eyes cloud over even more than accounting. And if it's not insurance, it's accounting.

Don't they realize that I just don't care? I don't know and I don't care. I'm not an accountant, nor do I want to be one, and the one thing I know about insurance companies is that they make a lot of promises they don't intend to keep. And that's from personal experience, not company business.

Yet today I was hammered. Tim always calls and expects answers. I never have them, but somehow he always seems surprised. The Boss has dumped the latest insurance crisis into his lap, and he calls me for help. Why doesn't the bonding company want to deal with us any more? I don't know. What do they want from us? I have no idea.

I hate those phone calls. He's like a bulldog who won't let go. He wants an answer, and I can't get off the line until I give him one, so I start making things up. Or maybe I'll promise to do something that I don't intend to follow through on. By the time I've listened to him droning on at me for more than a minute and a half, I don't know what I'm saying. What I really want to say is, "Goodbye."

It must be Monday. Those deadly phone calls don't always have the same upsetting effect on me, but on Mondays it's a little harder to take. I slept badly last night (again) and got up early this morning, and I needed two naps this afternoon just to make it through. They weren't long naps, though. The phone kept ringing.