Inter-Marriage E-mail

My husband and I have both had pretty rough week. The first heat wave of summer always knocks me on my ass and pretty much locks me indoors. This week, it kept me in with a potty training child who is working through the big boy/little boy issue. Lots of tears, lots of having to leave places (such as parks on beautiful mornings) due to tears, lots of me day dreaming about getting drunk in the afternoon, etc. My husband has also been suffering through his own hell week and has spent almost every night working late and then coming home to turn on the computer until the wee hours. In short, this week sucked.

When I couldn’t get basic errands run yesterday, I sent my husband an e-mail asking for him to run them for me. This is a pretty common occurrence as it is basically a get out of jail free card. He works late, but blames in on the errand. I get a necessary task done, so ignore how long it takes him to do it. It’s one of the little ways we stay happily married. However, sending my dearly beloved an e-mail can be a tricky thing. He has a habit of ignoring them or reading and deleting. My most common messages are sent via text and read either, ETA? or Milk, please. There are no cutesy messages about missing him or looking forward to the weekend. Those would immediately put me on the Do Not Open list, never to be read again.

However, I figured both he and I needed a little bit of humor to get through our days. Luckily, he felt the same. So, my few readers, here is the e-mail chain between the two of us about running errands. Enjoy.

Dear Husband,

I am having problems motivating my employees. They refuse to dress appropriately and that is causing a breakdown in my ability to handle my daily responsibilities. Also, they seem to want me to micromanage every aspect of their performance which is leaving me very little to no time to actually manage any of my own. One employee seems to have an undiagnosed hearing loss, temporary memory loss, as well as separation anxiety from his partner, Lightning McQueen. The older, more experienced employee seems willing to take control, however, I fear her ideas of appropriate behavior and mine are vastly different.

As such, I have been entirely prevented from achieving my three goals for the day: the acquisition of rolls from the purveyor of choice, the acquisition of beef gravy from the grocery store, and a quick stop at a local pharmacy for such much needed medicines.

I would have used a more immediate form of communication to confer this information to you, but unfortunately, our employees are also now using company communication equipment for personal use.

Sincerely,

Your Wife, SAHM

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

I do hope that you realize that your employee’s behavior is your responsibility, and your inability to lead them reflects poorly on your managerial skills.

Your unsuccessful completion of your tasks will result in disciplinary action, please be on the lookout for the form that I will require you to sign and return, in duplicate.

As it is a mission critical task, I will handle task 3, and pick up your medications this evening.

The other two tasks will have to be delayed until you can complete them tomorrow, and alternative plans will have to be made. I am open to suggestions at this point in time.

I appreciate your help in attaining the perfectly medicated state necessary for me to do my job properly. This will avoid my heart exploding and the extra hours that would cause maintenance. While I realize that managing my charges falls squarely under my job description, the attainment of our vertically-challenged staff was actually a dual venture and dual responsibility must be accepted. As to the tasks that are not deemed mission critical, no alternatives can be discussed until there is a set deadline placed on when they will be presented to management.

Unfortunately, due to our current corporate culture, any deadline given will undoubtedly be changed abruptly and without warning, so I may have to call in a third-party vendor to provide sustenance.

Also, will happily fill out all forms, in triplicate, if only I can then file them appropriately.

Your appreciation of my completing your tasks is noted, and the maintenance department is thankful for the OT avoided, as they have been under some resource strain lately.

While some responsibility for the recruitment of the vertically-challenged staff is mine, and the responsibility for leading and training these staffers is also a shared responsibility, in this instance, I cannot accept responsibility for their current behavior.

Using a third-party to fulfill the gaps left by the non-completion of tasks 1 and 2 shows good “out of the box” thinking, and you are to be commended for that. This allows the team to complete the assigned mission, without adversely affecting the overall timeline. Please follow the established procedures for purchasing from a third-party vendor, with the expectation that the purchasing dept should be able to complete their tasks by 7pm ET.

Due to the current economic environment, and the ongoing green initiative, the filing of forms in triplicate is prohibited; please consult your handbook for the proper completion steps of those forms.

And that, dear readers, is how we wound up having take-out Chinese for dinner last night (at 8:30) after he stopped at CVS.