"A man's GOT to know his limitations."

[bktheirregular]

On Tuesday, I got a Priority Task - translation, from English into Greek - not exactly a pitch into my wheelhouse, as it were. It had to be done by Friday (i.e. today). Drop-everything urgent. Big document.

Wednesday, I was already telling people that if they wanted my assistance, they'd have to get in line and wait.

By Thursday, they had finally relented a bit and said that it would be OK if it was ready by Monday morning. Still looked iffy.

Friday morning (today), looking like the job might be finished on time. Leaving aside corrections - I still have problems with Greek grammar, mostly the gender of articles, which is worst with inanimate objects and non-living entities and the like - masculine, feminine, neutral? I get crossed up with that all the time.

Anyway, I'm still getting people dropping stuff on my desk to interrupt and saying "I need this proofed for English right now." And then...

One colleague comes in, basically starting right off with:

Colleague: "I want this court decision translated. I'm giving you this part [about eight pages], and it needs to be done by Monday, so take it home and work on it a little during the weekend if you have to."

Me: At the rate I'm going, that means do the whole thing over the weekend.

Colleague: "Get on this, and if you have any questions on obscure court terminology, ask me."

Me: "I'll get on it as soon as I'm done with this other thing."

Colleague: "Well, maybe you can save time and just read through it and write up a summary. But it's got to be understandable."

Me: "That doesn't save time. I can't summarize it until I understand the whole thing, and I won't be able to understand the whole thing until I've translated the whole thing."

Colleague: (taking the sheaf of papers) "I'll try to work something out..."

There's levels of being taken for granted. On the one hand, it's nice to be needed, but on the other hand, is it me, or would it be courteous, if you're going to drop a load of work on someone, to maybe check what their current workload is like?

Sheesh, even the partners had the courtesy to ask if I could tackle their tasks. (I didn't answer "no". My answer was actually "what's the deadline? Because if it's urgent, I can put it to the top of the priority stack, but there's this other priority job that's pressing...")

Comments

[bktheirregular]

Thanks - but I'm not sure if it'd be a good idea to pile my headaches on top of your own surplus... :(

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

::g:: feel free-- yours will at least distract me from mine! ;)

[bktheirregular]

In that case, maybe you can go digging for stuff from the classics with regard to sports and gambling. :)

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

There are a few things-- the late addition to the Iliad wherein the soldiers who were supposed to be guarding the camp were in fact playing dice, a few finds of knucklebones as well. Then, of course there's all the odes to Olympic victors-- Pindar's the big one for that. If you're looking for Greek language but Roman period there's later stuff on chariot racing and other games from various amphitheatres. Any of those sound promising?