Joel moved into his new position in the Custom Programming group two months 
     ago. The group consisted of a Manager, Joel (no title, sort of a liason to 
     the company sales force), one QC person, one support analyst and four 
     programmers.
     For your amusement:
     -Today is the last day of the month and quarter. 
     -Salesmen are camped in my office wondering if their customer's work will 
     ship this month. Quarterly bonuses are on the line. 
     -His boss (Manager of the group) had surgery a week ago and is at home 
     recovering. Joel gets a "field commission" to manager.
     -Two of our programmers are on vacation, another is out sick
     -The support analyst resigned two weeks ago. Request for replacement was 
     put on hold.
     -The QC person is taking a half day off to close on his house.
     -This week alone, Joel has used entirely inappropriate language when 
     speaking with three vice presidents on separate occaisons (OK, so that 
     isn't really news!).
     
     For those keeping score, that leaves Joel and one programmer to wrap up the 
     group's affairs for the month. The phone has gone unanswered (and messages 
     unreturned) for most of this week.
     
     How bad is it? Well, when Patty asked me how my week was going, I replied:
     
     "My brain feels like I've been telekinetically dragging a parachute through 
     an Olympic-sized pool of JELLO"
     
     Pretty bad, huh?