Ooooo... so busy lately it doesn't ever seem like I have time to think, let alone write.

I've given myself over to silence lately. Usually, I’m one of those people that has to have a TV or radio on to feel comfortable but, with the pace of things lately a few moments of quiet are really necessary.

So much to write about... mmmmmm... where to begin? I know, how about this:

I’ve been fairly busy lately working (which is a story in and of itself). Something that happened the other day made me think about a trend I’ve noticed.

When was the last time you heard someone at your job say, “I don’t know.” Particularly when it involved them performing some kind of work related task or something they would be responsible for - usually it’s a common refrain when you’re asking the person in charge for some time off or for the ability to carry out some personal business - but, when was the last time a co-worker admitted to not being the “Master of the Universe?”

Just curious. Let’s all take a moment if we will and ponder that for a second, okay? Think you can remember hearing it recently at your job?

Anyway, so among the myriad responsibilities I wind up having, is coming in and doing those dirty jobs that nobody really wants to do. Yes, it can be quite tedious but, the pay is good.

Usually, I’ll get handed something a designer has made (oooooohhhh, pretty) but which now has to be used in real world settings by people who don’t care about the nuances of design and are more interested in getting their work done with a minimum of effort.

This entails taking a layout from a program a designer is familiar with (Quark and Illustrator are the most popular culprits), and putting it into some program which every office jockey the world over uses (Word).

Like a lot of other people in my end of the business, I hate all those Microsoft Office programs. They’re a necessary evil. Through the years, I’ve gotten familiar with them but, it’s a grudging familiarity to be sure.

So, this week one of my big projects was to take this design and make a template of it. What happens is once I’ve worked in the program for a few days, I get familiar with all the little tricks and as soon as a week or two passes without using Word, all those little neat tricks vanish from the knowledge base.

I’m in the middle of this thing and of course, like every other project I wind up working on, it was due three weeks ago. Eventually, I run up to this point where I get most everything finished but, there’s still this one thing I can’t quite figure out. Most programs nowadays have extensive help databases (which no one seems to want to use) and before I say I can’t do something, I’ll try typing in every kind of query I can hoping the program will tell me how I can do what I want to do.

Sometimes though it just doesn’t work out.

Now I’m left with two choices, I can say I don’t know how to do something or I can use what is a big tact these days and say it just can’t be done.

So, I say I don’t know.

Fortunately, I know people who might know and it’s only a matter of asking them. So, I tell the person I’m working for that that’s what I’ll do and I’ll find out the answer and get back to them...

...and as luck would have it, people are pretty nice to me about those things and when I send out an email asking for help, I get a bunch of responses a number of which have the answer I need. Lo and behold, problem solved!

So, I finish up the job and after everything is done I just go back and tell the guy everything is finished - it’s been taken care off and is ready to go.

He’s happy (it’s finished), I’m happy (I learned something and a bunch of people came through for me) and it’s one less thing to deal with.

But then, I got to thinking, how many times does someone actually say they don’t know?

Just something to keep in mind, don’t you think?