Some Questions Are Just Unanswerable...

There are a few key words and phrases which, as an assistant to someone infinitely more important than our lowlife selves, we hear fairly regularly. In my humble experience, most of them start with “Why?” or “Where?” or “Did you…?” and involve things that we know nothing about, usually because some cauliflower-headed boss has neglected to tell us either out of some sort of blissful ignorance or because they truly believe we have developed the ability to read minds. (And let’s hope that never happens or I’ll get fired and possibly arrested!)

I frequently hear, “I need flights for this Asia trip to all four destinations!” which stops all the cogs in my brain turning simultaneously in confusion for a few seconds while I try to remember what the hell he is talking about because, honestly, I have no recollection whatsoever of any trip to Asia in the near future or indeed any other time. Then he gets infuriated and I get infuriated and in the end he forwards me a chain of emails on the subject and I figure out this trip has been in discussion for weeks but he never bothered to include me on any of the correspondence or by…I don’t know…telling me in person, therefore I am oblivious to the max because this is the first I’ve heard of any trip and even though that’s hardly my fault, I look like some sort of glazed-eyed airhead who can only say things like, “Huh?”

Another one I hear is, “Where is my Dictaphone?” which, while providing an impressive mental array of possible fruity answers, the actual retort is always,“on your desk by your computer where it always is!” and then he will deny its existence and commence turning the entire office upside down and getting redder by the second and huffing and puffing until I go in there and find it…on the desk next to his computer – who’d have thought it? Which always leaves me thinking, “So how come it’s you running the world and not me?”