Spring Cleaning

I could clean out my desk in five minutes, and nobody would even know I was ever here. And I'd forget, too. —Ryan "the temp" Howard

A resolution was made, by me, recently, that I would grind down and really start getting things done at work. No more piles of things that "need to be done eventually" sitting in the recesses of my desk. Whereas I would spend much of my time sitting around trying to explain to my bosses why so-and-so wanted such-and-such completed, I'd just get it done. Instead of going back and forth with my colleagues asking why they won't file the contract amendment I put in their mailbox, I would stand in their cubicles and say "what do you need for this to get completed and I will get it for you.
In one case, a client had asked to do some work for us in a state where he wasn't authorized to work. In another case, a colleague of mine didn't understand what needed to be done so she didn't do it (that was November). In another case, I never really pursued the needs of a particular client because that client had never brought in any work for us. But this was the time that they got their needs addressed. I helped client 1 get authorized to do business. I restarted the case where my colleague was sitting on it and reasssigned it to someone else. I got client 3 rolling, and put him out on the road so he could do some work for us.
Suddenly, management was all over me. Why was work being done that came in four months ago? Why aren't there any records of client 2 being addressed? Why is a processor making decisions that authorize a case that management has been discussing for a week and hasn't come to any conclusions on? Suddenly, the boss is in my space telling me I'm a "problem employee," that when one of these things come up it's just an isolated event, but they're starting to see a pattern of me making things happen. "Making things happen," the crime of all crimes.
Then, my computer starts to break.
Now, I use a significant amount of technology that my collagues don't understand. IE5 takes five minutes to load, so I download Safari, which loads instantly. Outlook doesn't index emails, so I use Desktop Search, which is instantaneous. Instead of printing everything and keeping it on my desk where it can't be searched, indexed, or trigger reminders, I save everything as PDFs and attach them to tasks (they all have to be scanned back into the computer anyway). So my boss is fuming now, and starts demanding to know why I feel I have to load up my computer with all this extra stuff and make it break.
Here's what happened: Adobe Reader poses a security risk to our computers. This affects 95% of employees, as they use Adobe Reader. I don't; I use Adobe Acrobat. Well, when they put in a patch to block this security risk, it blocked Acrobat entirely. That confused Outlook 2003 since the patch was too new, which would send panic messages to Internet Explorer, but since IE5 was rendered obsolete 3 years ago, it can't pull the patch from Microsoft Help, because Microsoft no longer supports IE5. For everyone else's computer, the computer doesn't check to see if anything's wrong. But all of my new apps suddenly started asking "what the hell are all these old apps doing here?" and the whole thing crashes.
IT can't easily fix the computer, and here's why: it's a tier 5 problem. They have to exhaust all tier 1 possibilities before they troubleshoot tier 2. They have to exhaust all tier 2 possibilities before troubleshooting tier 3. And so on. Three days I sat at my desk, my computer on the fritz, getting all the work done that I can on the new, functional applications while the 6 year-old apps fall like dominoes.
Finally, today, the whole thing crashed. My boss sternly advises me that management is going to start discussing me; if their discussion moves as fast as their talks about all my clients, that won't affect me for months. But I needed some sort of catharsis. So, while IT sits at my computer, gradually escalating my issue, I started cleaning. First, it was organizing all the letters clients have sent me. Then, I started cleaning coffee mugs. Then I started shredding old documents from resolved issues. Then I started putting my paper clips in the supply cabinet. Then I started removing my desk accessories—pen holders, staplers—and at last I take down all the decorations, from posters and calendars to cheat sheets that I've since saved as excel spreadsheets on my computer, until all that's left is a pile of work to be done and my Dell.
At 3:00 PDT, my computer was finally fixed. I sat down and started closing out the existing issues. It's pretty slow these days, so I think I can have everything done on my desk by Monday. Then, the second an issue lands on my desk, I'll use the same panicked "have to get it off my desk" strategy that I used when I was behind. When my work is caught up, I'll finally get around to indexing the department's old excel spreadsheets into one easy-to-use database.
And I'll be happy. Not because my work is done, or because I'm moving forward, or because the boss is off my back. I'll be happy because of that clean desk. It's a psychological reminder that at any time, however hard things get, I could be gone in five minutes, and everyone would forget I was ever there. And I'll forget, too.