A Recipe For Stress

Ingredients

• One disorganised but likeable client in Australia who expects you to be available very early in the morning as that is their evening.
• One scatterbrained and frankly quite insane UK client
• One highly demanding US client, who assumes that you work until all hours of the night, as after all, it’s only the afternoon on their side of the world.
• One frustrating friend who is something of a drama queen and has no concept of the meaning of your plea “please do not call me when I am trying to work...yes, I do work from home but I am still not available during office hours”, who constantly asks your advice on her personal life, does the complete opposite and then tells you, “Yes, you were right!”, when things go horribly wrong.

Method
Start the preparation a few days in advance by scheduling a whole load of workmen to arrive on what will turn out the busiest day of the week. Noisy work is the best type, preferably something along the lines of repairing the gutters directly outside your home office, which requires the construction of scaffolding in line with your window. If possible, also book a bloke who gave you a good quote to power clean your driveway to turn up on the same day. Then, make sure you get as little sleep the night before....staying out until all hours drinking coffee and catching up with a friend you haven’t seen for months is a good method to ensure minimum shut-eye.

First, have your crack of dawn teleconference with the Aussie client....halfway through the call, bring in the blokes who are here to assemble the scaffolding (yes they’ve arrived an hour early but they aren’t fazed) so that they can thump and bang as loudly as possible, yell obscenities at each other and at one point almost smash through the glass with a very long plank. Pretend there is absolutely nothing going on out of the ordinary apart from a bit of background buzz from the long-distance call (luckily the client is pretty OK with things...he often dials in from home and has had his two-year old yell “Daddy, I need a wee wee!” right next to the phone).

Put the phone down from the Aussie client, and immediately answer it again...to speak to Insane UK Client who has just remembered she is supposed to have submitted a manuscript (badly written and requiring extensive editing) to a high brow journal, yesterday and has also just realised she is presenting at an equally high brow medical conference next week and needs a set of slides right now! Start working on Insane Client’s manuscript, discover there is a ridiculous amount of work to get done and the brief sucks. By now, Power Cleaner Man will have arrived (“Cuppa tea for us, love....mine’s 4 sugars”) to crank up his VERY LOUD and apparently very high voltage power cleaner....so energy-loving that it immediately trips the power in the house, cutting out the PC, internet connection and telephone, right in the middle of your second call to Insane Client, in which you’re trying to diplomatically explain to her that unfortunately, as your time machine is temporarily out of action for its annual service, you probably won’t be able to travel back to last week and thus meet her unrealistic timelines.

Scrabble around in the fuse box to flick back the tripped switch and restore power, inform Power Clean Man “This really can’t happen again as I am far too Busy and Important for this, and no, you can’t have another cuppa tea”. Then phone back Insane Client to apologise for the “unexplained temporary power cut” (“no, I did not slam the phone down on you!”) and continue the discussion of why Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is just that...in theory you could time travel but in reality you won’t be.

Finally, get down to actually doing some work, only to have to jump up a few minutes later to answer the door...to find a very mournful-looking Wheelie Bin Cleaning Man on your doorstep. He’s here to collect his 3 quid for his monthly jet clean of your bin, but is apparently sulking as he once mentioned to you that he was expanding his business to the cleaning of driveways, yet now he’s noticed that “You got someone else in then?” (yip, nothing gets past this bloke, especially not the large as life Power Clean Man jet spraying around his feet). Commend him on his powers of observation, inform him that he was slow off the mark getting you a quote and then add insult to injury by having to pay him for the wheelie bin clean in 5 and 10 pence pieces from the “Loose Change Jar” as you have absolutely no other money in the house.

Get back to work....by now the US client is on line and emails are flying in faster than you can reply. Make an executive decision to ignore them for the moment and try and get something (anything!) done for Insane Client. Realise that the loud grinding noise is coming from your stomach and is not Power Clean Man (he appears to have blown up his jet cleaner and will be coming back to finish the job another day) and as it’s now gone 3 o’clock, grab a quick bite to eat at your computer. Peanut butter on toast works well....it’s perfect for getting your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth so that when the phone rings for about the fortieth time that day, you can sound like a hornet just went in your mouth and stung you several times.

Realise that it’s Drama Queen friend phoning ...inform her that you really can’t talk now, and no, as you’ve already discussed at great length, you don’t think the guy she’s been running after for nearly a year is that interested, and that a Facebook poke from him is almost certainly not grounds for buying a wedding dress and booking the chapel.

Spend the next couple of hours desperately trying to get Insane Client’s project done, only to get a call from her at the end of the day, informing you that she’s changed her mind and won’t be submitting that manuscript or going to that conference after all. Put down the phone and curse out loud at no one in particular, then console yourself with the thought that she still has to pay for the day’s work. Then take a deep breath and prepare yourself for a long night ahead with the US client.