Six Hours I Will NEVER Get Back

Yesterday was one of the most wasteful days of my life. Not a good wasteful day - you know, those lovely days where you lounge and do nothing? But one where some SFPs decided it was their job, nay their mission, to waste my time.

Wanna hear all about it? Of course you do.

I'm all for the Green movement these days. I'm recycling better than ever, turning off the water when I brush my teeth, trying to keep the lights to a minimum, etc. etc. etc. But some of the people I work with have a "Green Team" and they are like eco-terrorists. They attacked my boss for (gasp) printing a brochure to mail to our client list. One brochure per year, mind you. And they did it after I encouraged her to send a message out to staff about the greener printing and distribution we did this year. Obviously, the only GREEN they understand is the total removal of all paper, ink, postage, and mailtrucks from our client communication process.

Imagine my delight, then, when their campaign to supply every person in the company with a mug so we can get rid of those pesky disposable coffee cups backfired in a big way. The mugs were made in China. Being that we are an environmental consulting firm and that we live in America where Mattel has been in the news daily since summer guess what everyone thought?

That's right. And one industrious person hopped right on out to their local grocery store and picked up the handy dandy test kit and swabbed the mug.

Surprisingly the mug (made in China) was just fine. The imprint of our company logo (did I mention we are an environmental consulting firm?) however - came up positive for lead. Now this handy dandy little $6 kit does not tell you how much lead, just that it is present. In fact, the FDA allows a certain amount of lead in the process stating in small amounts it is not harmful to human health - but the people I work with...yeah, they're not gonna go for that.

My delight quickly turned to dread however, since in typical manner - hysteria arose - and since my boss was away in a meeting, and the head of the GREEN ECO TERRORISTS was also out, somehow I got the lovely job of communicating this error to all staff and heading up the "Great Mug Recall of 2008".

Fast forward 6 hours, 22 phone calls, 4 conference calls, umpteen drafts and reviews, making the VP of HR get out of her sick bed to approve, and one stellar career-making and memorable moment when I told our firm's VP/General Counsel to "bite me" (yes, I really did) and you get an idea of the great day I had.

The first draft? was 3 concise but well-spun paragraphs (if I do say so myself) that took about 10 minutes to write and had the input and approval of the rest of our communications group.

At the end of the 6 hours, 22 phone calls, 4 conference calls, umpteen drafts and reviews, VP of HR and General Counsel fiasco -- the final version? was 4 sentences long.

"Last week we announced the distribution of mugs from the Green Team that would help us reduce waste of paper cup products. Partial shipments have begun to arrive and we have discovered some quality issues with the imprinting on the mugs. We are returning the mugs to the manufacturer as unsatisfactory to {Company}.

If you have a mug at your desk or see one in your office, please return it to a central collection point in your office so it can be returned to the vendor."

On a scale of 1 to 10 this day was a minus 1,434,526.