One thing I'll say for the kind of day that has one fire after another to be put out--it certainly goes by fast. One minute it was 9:15 and I'll swear that the next time I got a chance to glance at the clock it was 2:10 p.m. Just one emergency after another.

Not my emergencies, of course. Someone else imagined a crisis and passed it on to me to resolve. The more imaginary (or personal) the crisis, the more cranky I became. Not really cranky, but disinclined to tear apart my entire report and put it back together again because someone didn't notice a month ago that an item wasn't to her preference.

Too bad.

Except, naturally, it's my job to make the adjustments and try to keep everyone reasonably happy or at least accepting. I tried an old and reliable method: I put out there the entire report for everyone to see that I was being equal opportunity unfair. A couple of people did have good suggestions, which I jumped to incorporate. The rest of the blather died down rather rapidly. Transparency works if you've been fair and honest in the first place.

But you knew that already.