The myth of the silver lining

I think this is the fourth day in a row that we've gotten rain? And it's supposed to be like this through most of the week. I had coffee this morning with no sugar (how is it possible to have a building rife with seven different kinds of candy, but not a grain of plain old table sugar to be found?). The weather is conspiring to make my hair a frazzled mess, and I broke my only decent hair clip somehow this morning, so now my hair is being secured with a very utilitarian rubber band.

I spent part of my morning trying to explain to someone how our online ledger report program is different than their Excel worksheet that they used to track their expenses, and why the information between them didn't match. Then I learned (as I had suspected all along) that this person I was trying to educate didn't even know the first thing about formatting formulas into Excel. That one little skill is pretty fundamental to even the most basic clerical position around here, and would probably explain why their math was wrong - reason number two why the ledger reports showed a different balance than their incredibly error-riddled hand-crafted worksheet. This took me a horrifying hour and a half of attempting to explain. I swear to you, a couple of times it felt like I was trying to communicate to a barnyard animal, for all the comprehension I saw in that person's eyes. This is accounting. Not rocket science!

Now I'm engaged in trying to find a decent, workable (FREE) online mapping tool. I want a radius grid, and I want it to be presentable. I'm not having a lot of luck, and I freaking refuse to pay for some crap program that some kid mishmashed together out of a Google hack.

I love how my coworker comes in late, goes to play handball in the gym for an undetermined amount of time, takes twenty minutes to change in her office, disappears for long periods where no one can find her, and often leaves a few minutes early. Because that is effectiveness in action. She'll have a promotion and pay raise within six months - you mark my words.

Oh, and by the tone of these questions I'm being faced with today, I work with some seriously stupid people. That's a given, though, right?