Creeping my petty pace from day to day, I'm actually making progress on the paperwork piled on my desk. One would think from my job description that my job is a technical one, dealing with computers and software, vehicles and destinations.

In reality, I estimate that I spend 80% of my time dealing with people stuff--reassuring stressed-out supervisors, clarifying points for confused administrators, listening to angry participants vent their grievances, reframing issues for maximum clarity and efficiency and minimum emotion.

And my job description gives not one hint about any of that, except to say "exercises technical supervision" and include a phrase about other related duties.

The people skills are what enable the rest of the job to get done, of course, and I do not denigrate them in any way. However once, just once, I'd like to be able to pick up the phone, tell the person on the other end what needs to be done, and say thank you and hang up. Just a business transaction. I would, just once, like to be able to skip the usual "I know you're busy..." "Do you think you can handle..." "I sympathize with your workload..." "How was your weekend?" stuff.

Standard answer to the last question is always, "Too short." Some day somebody is going to give me a different answer and knock my socks off.

But I understand that the predictability and the socially accepted interchange are what make the business transactions easier, so I don't fuss and I take my role as the center of the process seriously. I wonder how my job description would read if it were to reflect what I do accurately?