A map of the orignal area code boundaries established in 1947. I'm enough of a goob to have pulled up a current map to switch back-and-forth between the two ("They've added one there... and there... and there....").

Management here at TV Gourd has their collective heads up their ass. Or their heads up their collective ass. I'm not sure which.

We're working on a huge project (one of those "We know this isn't really what your group does, but we could really use the help because, instead of using the last 6 months to work on it, we put it off until the last minute!" -type things^†).

Problems include:
• Forcing us to use proprietary programs that we've never used or been trained on, and no, they're not going to train us to use them.
• Those same programs actually being of no use to us.
• The one program that is useful (and almost necessary) is one that can't be installed on our group's computers because our software is out-of-date.
• The single, most useful database resource available to us (as in, 80% of the information we need is there) is also a single user resource. Only one person at a time can be logged in to it!
• The reports from which we're working: There are two different versions of the first half of the first report, no one seems to know what happened to the second half, while the second report is being given to more and more people who all try to start on the first page. When it is divided, it's by "I'll take the third page!" instead of dividing it up by subcatagory, so we'll have multiple people working on the same subcatagory.
• No standardized method of keeping track of our progress. I was the first to begin working on the report and I use a apparently complex system involving colored highlighters and a pen. When the others were brought on, Dumbass_Manager_01 asked me to explain my system, then suggested the others use whatever will work for them. Which, of course, will be great fun when all the reports are given to one person to be compiled.

^† Even better is when they say "If you do well on this, maybe they'll keep you around instead of laying you off!" when we've already been told by several management-types several months ago (including the one who said that) that the layoff dates were finalized and that there is nothing, short of a Jedi mind trick and the blessing of an Incan mummy girl, that will alter the fact that we're being laid off.


edited, because it's harmonious when your corresponding nouns and verbs agree in number.