In A Lurch

I try to be careful writing about work on this blog, simply because I'd rather keep th job I've got and not get fired or disciplined or given a talking-to over a blog post. I make it no secret that I work at a DOE laboratory on the cleanup side, and typically leave it at that.

But as the photo for this entry implies, we're in a bit of a lurch at work. The work we've done for the past two months has gone into the ashcan as people who make a lot more money than we do plan and make their moves. Nothing too terribly wrong has taken place, it's just a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, while the rest of the body (spleen, pancreas, et cetera) just goes on producing insulin or red blood cells or whatever these oragns do as the hands engage in a long round of thumb-twiddling. This might be part of where the phrase "good enough for government work" comes from, though you didn't hear that here.

But thus is the nature of all jobs, I think. The vast majority of the time, you get your work done and it penetrates the bureaucracy. All goes well. Only a few times does it get fouled up. I can recall an instance from my career in newspapers where the buraucracy fouled things up and left a story I'd worked hard on in the lurch. That put a significant dent in my enthusiasm, and was a time when hearing "You're way ahead of us" was not a good thing, because they never bothered to start the race.

So I know what being in a lurch feels like. So does Lurch: