The Number One Most Irritating Thing in the World...

...is when you KNOW you have something but you CAN'T FIND IT. I have 2 books on pattern cutting that I haven't used for perhaps 4 years that I have been looking for for 3 nights and I JUST CAN'T FIND THEM. And do you think this is pissing me off? Of course it is. Times like these I want to turn my room upside down, throw things, strew the contents of drawers out and crash around. But I don't. And I can feel it all raging around inside. I need more space. I need more shelves. I need to have filing cabinets at home so I can keep things in the way I do at work (I'm so organised there). I need an admin assistant more at home than I do at the office.

All my staff think that the answer to their over-workedness is an admin assistant. If each one of them had one they would be able to meet all their deadlines, apply for more funding grants, do more organising and planning, achieve more and be less stressed. I think having an admin assistant would be like doing the job twice - once explain it to the worker, go through all the systems, tell them how it should be presented and what a thorough piece of work would look like, then let them do the work, and second to check that they have done it to your own exacting standards. After which if they haven't done it right you either go through it all again or do it over yourself. So if you haven't got time for that its best to have the correct systems in place that enable you to do the work in the first place with the least amount of effort. Haven't managed to persuade them of this yet.