So back in August I was flipping through some of our publications and discovered that the instructions used by our night staff were horribly out of date and as a result pretty much useless.  I went to my boss to advise him of the problem and told him that I wanted to pull the publication and start working on updating it.  I knew what was missing and how it needed to be organized.  My boss told me that I was mistaken as my two predecessors had updated the publication “not long ago” and to not worry about it.  So against my better judgment I dropped the issue.

At the beginning of November my boss took a look at the publication after we had a problem and suddenly realized that it was horribly out of date and pretty much useless.  I did my best not to appear shocked by the revelation.  As a result he decided that he was going to revise the publication in question - not a problem except that he relies on me to oversee the daily operations and while he has a great grasp of the “big picture” of operations he’s no longer really familiar with the nitty gritty stuff.  As the boss I think that’s a good thing, but as the person writing an important operations guide for the staff it’s not so good.

Then there’s the fact that my boss is just a terrible writer.  On the plus side he knows he’s a horrible writer.  A small bonus is that he’s such a terrible writer that we can get away with some fun wording in some of our documents - take for example the recommendation letter that “came” from him with a phrase from Thomas the Tank Engine “…implemented processes that streamlined operations and resolved problems that have caused confusion and delay for customers” :D

So off he goes to do a comprehensive re-write of this publication - and unfortunately every so often showing just how out of touch he can be.  Just last week he called me in to his office because he wanted to know why we weren’t using a checksheet that he had just found.  The trouble is - we’ve been using it for the past two years…

After three months he sends me his completed revisions for review…  After 4 hours I only made it to page 9 - and you could count the number of original words left on 1 hand.  My boss swings by to check on my progress and sees how extensive my revisions have been.  He was shocked about all I had done but agreed that they were correct…

Then he asked me why he worked on it for the last three months….

I had to bite my tongue…