While You Were Out, or, Ramifications of a Week-Long Vacation

Here's what I was met with when I got to the office this morning:

Voicemails: surprisingly, none. Then again, this is the first time I actually remembered to change my voicemail greeting to tell people I was out of the office...

Emails: 152. Not too bad, all things considered (although I do admit I was semi-working on Monday and Tuesday while I was monitoring my email for IMA so there were a few more that I had already taken care of and deleted.) Unfortunately there weren't many that I could delete without addressing. Boo.

Inbox: Overflowing. All three of them. And two stacks on my desk. Paperless society be damned. I saw that and the three post-its on my computer screen and said I was going back home. Ha.

Other notable decisions that were made during my absence:

** The entire accounting department is relocating. Upstairs. In two weeks. Nice...

** Legacy Alcan employees are integrating with Milprint Corporate (hence the move) and with SAP complications it was decided that I'd take back some New London stuff temporarily (my previous position prior to jumping to Milprint North back in 2006.) Unfortunately it appears that the person I'll be taking this back from was not informed about the whole thing as she seemed quite surprised when I asked her about it. Aah, communication!

** A summer intern was hired and apparently I'll be responsible for keeping her busy (again - let's hope this one is more detail-oriented than the one last year!) She started this morning. (Suprise!) But the IT guy is so swamped with SAP and Alcan that he won't be able to get her set up with computer access until later this week. Really, what can one do in an accounting department without a computer these days? Shred and file, that's what. Hello, learning experience!

Oh, and Citrix crashed for four hours this morning, leaving the entire company without access to any financial, reporting, or production systems. Yay! Welcome back!

I'd say I'm about 1/3 of the way caught up with things. Inventory day is Friday, with the Memorial Day holiday royally screwing up my count in both timing and manpower. At least I now have an extra person in the new intern. (Her name is Jennifer. Doesn't quite have the same ring as "Mike the Intern" from last year, but it will do.)

Having a few days off was nice, but it always takes about as long as I was gone to catch things back up to normal. Things are looking to get pretty crazy this summer with SAP training, mocks, and go-live on August 1. Final EUT is mid-July, but it looks like I might be pulled in to some of the inventory dry runs. Woo. Now if only they'd give me access to SAP...