The Friday Ultimatum

It’s official.

Mondays are for admin.

Tuesdays to Thursdays for work.

Fridays for networking.

This means that meetings may be arranged on Fridays, but only if they involve lunch and wine and last all afternoon. Briefings, last minute jobs and emergencies can only be attended to between Tuesday and Thursday. Any work related calls or emails received after 11:00 on a Friday will be attended to on Monday after 10:00.

Clients may not stroll in to the office an hour late on a Friday morning and proceed to make amendments that they should have made over a month ago. They certainly may not ask me to drive to Woolworths so they can have honey in their tea. Actually, they can’t do that on any day.

It is a source of intense irritation that clients feel they can breeze into my life and make it hell every Friday. It is not as though the sky was falling or the Apocalypse was nigh. It is inevitably easily avoided by simple time keeping and some forward planning.

I know, they know, that I know, that they know, that I know the only reason they do this every week is so they can get out of their offices and then go for a long boozy lunch using me as an excuse. Leaving me punching the keys on this stupid keyboard as if my life depended on it, which it probably does. 

I’m making this a formal notification. Clients are welcome to call on me on Fridays as long as they take me to lunch. I might even concede a breakfast meeting on any day of the week if it actually involves breakfast at Tashas or Fournos. Stale croissants from the Engen Quickshop do not count. Of course, if you are looking for intelligent input said breakfast must be later than 08:00 preferably 09:00. Otherwise I’ll just stare at you and mumble incoherently until the caffeine enters my blood stream and kick starts my brain.

You’ve been warned.