typical day at the office

My boss sends me an email, requesting that I see him regarding "whitelisting" clients. Uh-oh. I'm not sure what this means, but it's guaranteed to be a tedious project.

It's worse than I thought.

Over the weekend, my boss didn't receive an email that he was supposed to, because it went to his "spam" folder. So, rather than simply get into the habit of checking his spam folder each morning for anything that might have been incorrectly labeled and sent there, he has decided to take it upon himself (correction: assign to ME) to make sure that this doesn't happen in the future.

He flippantly tells me that "someone in the office, not necessarily you" (read between the lines... definitely ME) needs to add ALL of the possible contacts of his to this "whitelist" in Outlook, to make sure that all of those contacts' emails will get through to him.

I look at him with incredulity, my jaw practically dropping to the floor... because he has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of contacts. And some of them have multiple email addresses, so they would ALL need to make it to this list.

I inform him (again) that since the spam filters have been updated, there will only be the occasional email that gets trapped there, and that all he needs to do is to click on an email in that folder and "accept" the sender, which automatically adds them to the "whitelist." He says that he simply cannot take that chance. And that we need to add ALL the people he has been in contact with... even if he hasn't been in contact with them for several years, just in case they send him something out of the blue. (his words, not mine.)

My jaw tightens with anger as I grasp the absurdity of this project.

I take a deep breath. Then, calmly, I let him know that there is no official office "whitelist," and that all of the other attorneys decided against doing something like this, since it seemed like an awful lot of work for something that could be gotten around in a simple manner (by just checking your g**damned spam folder!!!), and that he was the only one requesting this.

He said he understood, but wanted to proceed, nonetheless.

He said that I could start with the list of his contacts that I had created for him over 6 months ago, when the office had changed names... (flashback... the attorneys in the office were supposed to send out an email to their contacts, to make them aware of the name change of the firm. My boss had me create this precise list for him, which took me nearly a month to do (with all the research and revisions involved), and then the email was never sent out. And all my work was for naught.)

In any case, he mentions that I might start with that list I put together for him those many months ago. However, he states, the list only includes one email address per person... and he needs to make sure that ALL email addresses per person be included on this "whitelist" of his.

I close my eyes tightly, press my thumbs to my temples, and try to collect my thoughts. Before I lose my mind completely.

"Okay, so just to clarify," I say..."you want me to go through the hundreds of people on this list, and add those names and addresses to this other "whitelist." Then I need to go one by one and look up each person in your Outlook contact folder, and make sure that those additional addresses for every single person are also added to this list?"

Yes, that is correct.

He says that I should get in contact with our IT person, and maybe there is an easier way to do all this. (I want to scream... you mean, like checking your DAMN SPAM FOLDER, like EVERYONE ELSE seems to be okay with doing???!!!)

ugh. I hate my job.

I leave the IT guy a voicemail, and now I wait to see how bad this is really going to be.