Spring Break in the Office

The boss is on spring break.
The boss is in the Carolinas or some place.
Who really cares? The boss is gone!
We who are left in the office are really
enjoying spring break this year.
The mood is really upbeat.
There are no "urgent priority" emails.
There is no Crisis-of-the-Day every morning.
There are no "Thank You In Advance" memos.
It turns out that the office runs just fine when
the boss is gone. We knew that, of course.

The middle managers in our company have their
panties all in a bunch about next year's budget.
It's not actually the budget they're worried about.
It's their jobs. As the economy slowly circles the
drain, the big wigs look around to see where costs
can be cut. The workers have been operating at
bare minimum for a long time, so there's not much
to cut there. So they look at the huge throngs of
basically useless middle managers, and they think,
maybe we can make some budget cuts there. So
there have been a lot of insecure middle managers
running around nervously for a few months. And
when they get nervous, they write new policies
and procedures and memos and emails and rules
and regulations. Like that's going to show us all
how incredibly useful they really are. We're not
fooled.
So our nervous, memo-writing boss is on vacation,
and we're all breathing a sigh of relief. I mean, it
feels so good when they stop beating you with that
hammer of theirs. It's like our own little spring
break.

One more full week of this, and then it's back to

the usual micro-managing fenzy.