If your request is REALLY URGENT,

We are constantly battling with things that screams to grab our attention. Work, significant other, close friends, family, perfect stranger all jostle for our attention. At work, we are sometimes (read: constantly) bugged by colleagues and superior who demand we drop everything we are doing and either i)help and assist them, ii)do it for them (as they are busy, duh) or just plain trying to be cheeky.

In my office, the interdepartmental memos are color coded to i) identify the origin of the memo, and rightly so the sender, and ii) to warn us of the level of importance the said memo is. Our division is coded light blue. Not too bad. Our sister organization uses green, the corporate affairs uses some kind of yellow, and the list go on, well... you get the drift.

But the top dog's office, uses the color pink. Well, i think it's practical, and the color doesn't really matter, as long as we see a pink memo with our name on it. Better drop everything else, and put that memo at the top of the urgent list. Whatever information on it is of utmost importance, if not how are we to know who deputizes for the boss when he's away in Europe or Australia or China on company business? Or whatever deemed important enough to warrants a pink memo.

Today, I 'missed' one request from a colleague. She's compiling a dossier of document, and I'm in charge for the information from my department with regards to a project. She's adamant on me sending a hard copy, whereas I suggested a soft copy, should she needs to edit/adjust any info. That was discussed in our meeting on Wednesday.

Well, the document is due this afternoon but unfortunately, I am caught in an urgent request early this morning, and the data collection and analysis took me a bit longer than usual. So, I missed her 'deadline'. She later sent an email, proposing that I send the documents to her in electronic format, should I be too busy to meet her. What did I suggest?

Like I said, if the request is really urgent... I WOULD HAVE DONE IT ALREADY.