Timesheet Mondays

I hate Mondays. We all hate Mondays. But I probably hate Mondays more than people in other Cube Cities.

Monday not only means there are mountains of work to climb all week; it means timesheets are due. At the ad agency, we have a timesheet program in which we track the hours we've billed per client, in 0.25-hour increments. It's a game, and there are a lot of players. Somebody has to add you to a project. Then somebody else adds you to a specific task for that project. This gets bothersome when you complete 8 tasks for one project in a week and you have to hunt down the various players who need to add you to those tasks...because of course they didn't do their job and you have to ride them until they do.

I try to be a team player. I try my best to complete my timesheets on Fridays, but the task masters usually foil my plans. It's like they need at least 7890427 email reminders from me before I can pass go and collect my task.

Add this to the game: Hello, it's Monday! I'm already hitting the ground running, and yet I have to deal with Timesheet Monday?

If you don't complete your timesheet by noon on Monday, you receive a public flogging via email the next day, as does your manager. It's a nastygram to a large group of people that is supposed to motivate you to play by the timesheet rules and get your time submitted, which wouldn't be a problem if task masters did their job. What's really hilarious is when senior leaders get really frustrated, send a self-important message to everyone to explain the urgency of getting timesheets submitted, and then there's still no improvement.

I will continue to play the Timesheet Monday game as well as Lotto Texas. I figure the odds of success for each are about the same.