Labor Day

The Labor Day holiday was very well timed this year.  Work has been rather frustrating the last couple of weeks.  I've come to accept that I'm not going to be promoted to the departmental manager... in fact it looks like they aren't intending to allow us to have a manager at all.  We've been without a Quality Director for six months and without a President for four months.  The big decisions that we keep putting off as not ours to make are all becoming critical.  We are finally being allowed to make them, but the delays have cost us.  The layers of indecision and the apparent corporate direction shifts are just beginning to surface just as next years budget cycle has begun.  We don't know what we will be doing next year but we have to set in stone how much its going to cost us to do whatever it is that they ask us to do and of course to justify our numbers.  Our third quarter audits have gotten underway.  I ended up on four audit teams instead of one so that I will have the experience to lead all of the fourth quarter audits.  Our independent lead auditor quit, he was the one tasked with auditing the audit system, the corrective and preventive action system and the complaint files.  These three systems are all under the direct control of our other lead auditors.  They are not allowed to audit themselves.  As an added bonus our most problematic product line of the year had another major incident.  We've been very lucky in that these issues have all been brought to light prior to patient involvement... which means that no ones been hurt.  But every issue makes us dislike working with this supplier just a little bit more.  We did not get to choose the supplier, he was part of the package deal when we bought the product line and it has been the biggest draw back.  We also had another labeling issue (internal only but that's about five too many this year).  I want to fall back and revamp the whole system but I am much too close to it to see it clearly.

The three day weekend was a glorious time of doing NOTHING.  I think I read three books this weekend, all of them so low on the intellectual scale that I may actually be dumber now than I was before.  Escapism is for lowering your stress level and it seems to have worked well.  I'm back at work today with a new and improved attitude.  I took all of the papers off of my desk pushed them in to an empty carboard box and I'm taking them out to the parking lot to use as a small fire for roasting marshmellows. 

Its still raining too much to start a fire so I guess I'll just organize the pile by priority and get back to work.  I'll go buy a s'more flavored candy bar out of the vending machine to keep me company.