Halo Strangulation Ahoy?

My secretarial colleague came to see me earlier, and informed me that not only was our newest teamie off sick (as a hospital patient, no less) for the forseeable, but our other secretary had phoned in sick this morning. I immediately offered my services, knowing where this would end.

Surely enough, come 2pm, the call came: 'Would I please come up and speak to our senior consultant pdq?' Not so much a request as a three line whip, maybe. Therefore this afternoon, I found myself unravelling not only the work I had done a week ago, but also trying to find the work that my other two colleagues had done. One of them had copied and pasted a heap of my typing into the correct format, but hadn't been able to finish the job. The other had typed some letters but saved them in an area that we didn't have access to, which will require some solving tomorrow.

By the time I crept out at 5.30, (consultant on the phone and not able to leave it) I had found 17 letters and reports out of a total of 20, plus formatted and printed the external ones. The guys on the IT helpdesk had immediately opened the accesses I knew I needed when I requested them, which helped. I still can't find the letters my newest teamie had typed and saved. She had only just transferred from another area so I wonder whether they are saved in her personal drive there instead.

As it looks like our much valued and missed newest teamie will be out awhile, this may be the New Normal for now. Oh well. Mr C should be used to this, as between us we give hours and hours of our weeks to requirements and causes which give us peace or satisfaction (or something) .

Meantime when senior consultant sees the pile tomorrow, he will need to understand the truth: he threw the entire pile of work at me without reading a word. The other secretary had done some of the work, but not all. I will have to make this clear in order to be fair to her. I only had to sort out the letters, and I didn't really do a terribly good job of them, by my standards. Will be interesting to see what he says.

Interesting in more ways than one. Does he prefer letters done quickly but with errors because his typist is not familiar with the system, or does he prefer them done better but slower?

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