Now! Do it Now!

I'm sitting at work just after lunchtime, about to get on with something useful, and my boss wanders over and asks me to do a quick piece of work for somebody "now". And also a second piece of work "now". But the second one is more "now" than the first one. Tricky for me. I can do things "soon", or "later", or preferably "next week", but having things ready "now" generally requires a certain amount of prescience and/or preparation. And I don't have the former and hadn't done the latter.

Neither of the tasks is in any way hard, and each will take me approximately 1-2 minutes. But they are needed for a meeting that starts "now" - there seems to be a lot of now about today.

Okay, best get started at the two tasks. To emphasize that I'm about to devote my entire attention span to them, I write on a post-it note what I have to do, and then write "NOW!" in big capital letters beneath. Clearly I mean business if I've used capital letters and an exclamation mark. Satisfied that I am about to do said tasks, boss man sits down.

Task 1 is quite straightforward: print three pieces of paper on a different printer to the normal one, as the toner is running out on the normal printer and it's easier to go to a far away printer occasionally (approx 60m) than learn how to change a toner cartridge. As a bonus, I don't even have to pick the printouts up myself - bossy-wossy will do it for me.

So time now to start on task 2? Not quite. I'm not going to sit down and take all this "now" crap. I don't perform tricks for biscuits. I am not a... oh wait, biscuits you say? Ok, what do I do next? Just give me the biscuit!

But wait - something's not right. Yes, that's right, no biscuit was offered. So without an incentive it's time for me to raise merry hell. Time to kick some ass. Time to protest in the time-old manner. Whilst boss is at the printer, I... get drinks for the team from the drinks machine and take several minutes to do this. Ha! How do you like this kind of "now"? Hey! At least notice my protest! See what I've done? I've deliberately extended the time until the second task is completed. On purpose. Because I am a REBEL. Yeah!

Oh fine. Be like that then. Here's the completed second thing that I can't even remember what it was at the time of writing, as it was so quick and trivial to do. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and he asks me to print some sheets of paper. call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't.