Impossible Job

Last week, my boss asked me to produce a professional looking ten page job profile for a potential new appointment.

He provided me with an example from another employer, and asked me to use the same format.

He wanted me to find some suitable photographs “online” to use.

This was all outside of his skillset.

And mine.

He wanted it “by tomorrow” (Wednesday), and gave me the text he’d written for the first page, as well as the headings he wanted to use for the remaining pages.

The formatted example he’d given me was a pdf. I was very pleased to discover that Adobe now provides a free pdf to Word conversion, which certainly made my job easier.

It was easy enough to find photographs, of course, but not so much photographs that are free to use. My boss later told me he wasn’t worried about that, as he “wasn’t using them for commercial purposes.”

The next day (Wednesday), my boss emailed to say he would send me the final nine pages of text he still hadn’t written “tomorrow morning” (Thursday), and that “we” would “populate” the template document then.

While I was eating lunch the next day (Thursday), his email arrived leaving me two hours to put the whole thing together. I didn’t think it would be enough time, but just got on with it.

Two hours later, I still had two pages to do, but had to collect my kids from nursery and school, make their tea (or dinner, as they call it), and get them in the bath. I managed to finish it later while they watched TV.

My boss was very pleased, although he said he didn’t expect anyone would actually see it.