Getting Sassy With My Boss

Business seems to be slowing down, which is a good thing, in a way. These slowdowns give us a chance to review all of our files, making sure we're caught up on everything, and it gives the secretary a chance to catch up on balancing the books and checking inventory. The other day my boss tells me to set up a service at the national cemetery for 8 days from that day. We had a funeral mass that morning, so I told him I would do it after mass and after I had lunch. The mass was with cremated remains, so me and my boss went, leaving our Errand Guy and the Secretary behind. Since things had slowed down, there were some, but not too many, errands to be run, and Errand Guy decides this would be a good day to work half the day. When I get back from lunch, I realized that even though there weren't many errands to be run, they were critical. Especially picking up one particular death certificate from the doctor's office and getting cremation authorization for it, plus some certified death certificates to pick up from the health department.

So I took off to handle these errands, forgetting completely about the service at the national cemetery. In the meantime, my boss is taking a very very long lunch, we have one guy who was taking his regular day off, and Errand Guy who bailed at lunch. Well, when I get back from running the errands, my boss was back and asks if everything was set at the national cemetery. I told him that no, they weren't. He looks at me with the deer in the headlights look and asks why not? I tell him because I've been busy doing Errand Guy's job! He then gives me grief over which is more important, death certificates or missing a funeral?

Bear in mind this is the same guy who, when things are busy, is always sweating bullets over not forgetting about death certificates. So the only thing I can infer from his attitude is that the most important thing at any given time is whatever he thinks it is. So if I have a choice between running death certificates or setting up services a week in advance, whichever I choose to do will probably be the wrong thing. In any event, I got his services set up in plenty of time so now he can start picking something else to fixate on.