A band of women from various school districts all over the world descended upon Rosen Publishing in an attempt to shoot the messenger?namely customer service. We barricaded ourselves behind our cubicles and prepared to fight to the death, but it was no use. We launched textbooks with crudely made catapults, but they sideswiped our every strike and counterattacked with guns that shot poison-tipped bar codes. One by one we fell, casualties of a war we didn?t start and clearly couldn?t finish. They paraded through PTA meetings nationwide with our heads on sticks, terrifying the children in their classrooms enough to work harder. Nobody had to bribe the kids to do extra credit work anymore. Such a warning tends to bring the message home without any room for confusion. Never mind the No Child Left Behind Act?this was real incentive.

The entire network at my job was down all day yesterday. No database, no email, no web browser, no nothing. As a result, the customer service staff was severely crippled, but I gladly dealt with the circumstances. They were nothing compared to last week?s non-stop blitzkrieg of calls.

One of our staff members took a well-deserved vacation last week. It was as if his subconscious knew that the bottom was going to fall out. Every single thing that could go wrong with an order went wrong. The phones would not stop ringing. Not only that, but there were only two of us handling the calls. Issues began to backlog almost immediately. How I made it through that week without randomly killing people on the street amazes me. Truth be told, even if that vacationing member was here last week, we?d still be backlogged. That?s how much work we had.

The processing center that we work with didn?t help matters either. More often than not, books need to be sent to them for bar codes, spine labels, and other stuff that librarians need. Last week, a sorting error caused three different orders to get screwed up?a mess that is still in the process of being corrected. I?ve only been working here about six months, but I?ve never heard of orders being botched up this badly. Things were tough all over last week. Absolutely horrendous.

Thankfully, I?ve actually been clearing stuff off of my desk this week. Progress is a good thing. Of course, in the midst of making progress, the network went down. So you improvise and try to make things work, but there?s only so much you can do when your life source is a dead fish. Could be worse?this could?ve happened last week?

In between my responsibilities at work and church, I barely have time for my wife or myself. It?s a fact of life that can make me rather resentful if I dote on it too long. Oftentimes, all I want to do is immerse myself in music or a good book, kick back and watch a movie or rock the PlayStation for a while. But my travels on the subway from work and back take up at least 90 minutes of my day and I?m usually exhausted after work. I constantly fall asleep on the train ride both to and from work. Once the day is done, I usually don?t have time to do much other than a few quick chores and get ready for the next day.

This is ?rat race? living, and I?m not cut out for it. I?m not sure how many of us truly are. Life wasn?t meant to be lived like this, and I think you know that.