I'd be worried that my clients would read this, but odds are they're not tech-savvy enough for a Google search

Today was one of those days where I would have blown my brains out if I wasn't so certain that everyone around me would break out the Ouija Boards to bug the shit out of me in the afterlife.

Most of my rage I attribute to quitting smoking again. Thirty-fifth time's a charm! It's not that I'm nic-fitting left and right, it's just that I find myself without my usual three-minute on-the-hour-every-hour break from the madness. Sure, I take my deep breaths and count to ten when things get a little too intense, but the fact remains that I'm still sitting at my desk, which means that I can't stop them from coming into my office.

Why, you may ask, don't I just step away from my desk and go outside like I used to and simply not smoke? Because they now follow me out there if I do. It's no longer personal time, it's I just happen to be outside time.

In the words of the immortal Lloyd Bridges, "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking."

Most of the problem stems from the office being short-staffed this week. One of my bosses is on vacation this week, and as much as I love proving to him when he comes back that we were able to handle everything while he was away, it's gonna be tough. Sure, we're getting shit done, but it's not gonna be up to the standards I know we're being held to in his absence. It also doesn't help that the clients we've been dealing with this week have been a wee bit prickly. It's almost as if they've become self-aware that the invisible sweater they've been knitting doesn't exist, and they're looking for something else to fixate their insanity on.

Here they are, listed anonymously:

Client A: Brought in his entire hard drive to transport his files. What's worse, is that he forgot the power cable to said hard drive, and we needed to unplug one of our computers to use the power cord, which could possibly not have been the same voltage. Even worse, he didn't have all the files we needed on that hard drive, and he was leaving for a cruise, so he couldn't get the other files for us, telling us, "You guys'll figure out something." This is like a cop asking for your ID, and you hand him your pants. Then, you piss all over the cop, claiming that they could test the DNA in the urine.

Client B: Bugged us five times a day for proofs on a project, only to tell us when it was approved to print that she wouldn't have quantities for us for another six weeks. Then, she gave us a week to design and print two jobs that were due in a week. I wanted to beat her to death with a Franklin Planner.

Client C: Wanted this woman's name listed in the project as Maddie, then changed it to Madeline, then changed it back to Maddie and approved it. After it was printed, she requested that it needs to be Madeline in all future projects.

Client D: Five rounds of revisions to a simple business card layout. Same information every time, just obsessing over the spacing of the lines of text. To test a theory of mine, the last proof was exactly the same as the previous one. It was approved, and this client went right back to repeatedly washing her hands and muttering to herself.

Client E: Disputed the capitalization of a word set in a font that doesn't contain lower-case letters. That's not a giant, Mr. Quixote, its a windmill.

Client F: Shocked and appalled that I was out to lunch at 12:05, even though they didn't call ahead to let us know that they were stopping by. I'm shakin' the bushes, boss!

Ugh... and this was only Tuesday.