The Ancient Rite of Complaining About How Busy You Are With Work

Sorry, I can’t make it to your cave painting and wine thing. I’ve been crashing on this new wheel design since this morning and we still have to submit the specs for the fire concept to engineering.

Neanderthal, 35,000 BC

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I’m already late on the quarterly occupancy filing — will you tell the folks in the lobby that we don’t have any room tonight? The equine team might have the bandwidth to make some space in one of their stalls.

Innkeeper, 0 BC

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I can’t get away from this wheat productivity analysis for the Duke. Any chance you can get the numbers from the other fiefdoms by COB today? I’m having a tag-up with the agriculture team tomorrow, so it’d be great to have some fidelity on our progress.

Peasant, 1100

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Why is comms tasking us with an “urgent” message relay around town? Can you see if Paul or William are around? They were super fired up about the whole Revolution initiative during the all-hands, so this is honestly their baby.

Rebel, 1775

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I’m double- and triple-booked fighting over our new acquisitions in Belgium. Pinging you for a status update on supply chain integration. I know we’re really low on materials downstream. Should I be floating my résumé elsewhere?

Frenchman, 1815

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I still need to give these legislative talking points a good look before I send it up the chain. Can we reschedule our messaging strategy meeting to early November? Any time on Tuesday usually works for me.

Suffragette, 1910

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I’ve got a huge backlog of compliance reports on my plate, but these risk assessments are just make-work. Let’s slow walk them for now; the outlook on returns looks great for the foreseeable future.

Banker, 1929