:::inarticulate gurgling noise:::

Okay, you guys. I know it's been a week since I last posted, but seriously? It seems like hours. This week has gone by in a blur...a blur with column headings and row numbers, brought to you by Microsoft. That's right--I have spent the week in a hell of Excel.

From Monday through today, all I have done at work is to work on a grossly complicated system of Excel spreadsheets, which was left to me by someone who didn't know what it did, nor did the person before him. Between my boss, my uber-boss, one of the programmers, and myself, we managed to figure out today that we've been sending out inaccurate data on this spreadsheet for at least a year or more. Yet no one has noticed or corrected it, til it came to my realm of influence, whereupon the recipients have started to scrutinize every last little cell, every last formula.

I don't know how this thing works. I could figure it out, given peace and time; but every time I come near figuring it out, someone finds something else that needs to be changed, which upscuttles my understanding and forces me to start over. Seriously: NO ONE IN THE COMPANY has the knowledge of what, exactly, this thing is supposed to do, and how. There are six or seven people who each have pieces of what it ought to do, or where it ought to be getting its data from--but some of them are wrong, and some people's information contradicts other people's info, and all of it confuses me.

What's worst: I was told today that this is entirely my responsibility, even the things I don't know, and that I SHOULD know them, and that my NOT knowing them is a disappointment. In essentially those exact words, was I told this. So now I'm worrying that my job is in jeopardy, and let's just forget the fact that NO ONE TRAINED ME when I started this job, and even the person before me who did this same report for OVER A YEAR had any idea of how it worked. Somehow all that is to be overlooked, and I am suddenly expected to do what two people before me and five people around me don't seem capable of doing, regardless of the fact that they have been here MUCH longer than I have and know MUCH more about the workings of the business than I do.

I stayed past 6 two days this week, and didn't leave before 5:30 except for once. I went to lunch yesterday, too--otherwise, no. So it's not for lack of trying. And I will be working on it from home this weekend, at the request of the boss.

I am SO TIRED of this spreadsheet. I am seeing cell references in my sleep.

My brain has turned to oatmeal. RUNNY oatmeal.

I think I need a nap.