Bob looks up from his Blackberry. Yeah, right. Who am I kidding? Bob keeps on thumbing his Blackberry, eyes exclusively on the screen, while I present to him the report I’ve been preparing for the last seven months.

“For those reasons I strongly advise against the custom build solution,” I say. “Any questions before I move on?”

“Huh? Um, yeah?” (scroll scroll tap tap scroll). “Did you consider doing a custom build?”

His eyes very nearly flicker up to the current slide, which is titled “The Custom Build” and has a size 32 font table listing pros and cons. Looking around the room I see that there is nobody else in the room. It’s just me and my boss.

I mumble the words to Mary Had a Little Lamb and then say, “Thank you for your question,” and I move on to the next slide.

“Great, thanks,” he says, and he moves on to his next message.

Just for the hell of it I go ahead with the presentation. I even make eye contact with Bob’s dandruff to let it know I’m speaking from knowledge and not from a prepared script. Two slides from the end of my thirty- slide presentation Gina pokes her head in and asks if she can borrow Bob for a minute.

“Can we reschedule?” Bob asks me. “Put something on my calendar for next week.” Out the door he goes. The way he cranes his neck towards his device you could balance a bowl of oranges on the back of his head.

Next week Bob is on vacation. I’m not discouraged. Discouragement was how you’d describe my state six months ago when I first attempted to give my presentation. Five months and eleven almosts later I’m in it more to break up the monotony of browsing the internet all day. Besides, they already moved ahead with the project back in August, using a custom build approach. It was immediately behind schedule and over budget.

Bob asked me to write a memo on why the project was behind schedule and over budget. I’m presenting that one to his Blackberry tomorrow. For the fifth time. Meanwhile the project lead scrapped the custom build, rebaselined the schedule, and has had things back on track since December.

You guessed it. I’m presenting the conclusions from my lessons learned investigation of how they turned around the project on Friday. For the third time.

Why, you might ask, do I bother doing the work at all? Character, I might answer. Ethics. Commitment to public service. Yeah, right. Who am I kidding? I stopped working months ago. Every presentation since November has been the same slides with a different template.

Here we are now at my annual performance review. Bob looks up from his Blackberry. No, really, he does. We’re in his office, so he can check his email on his computer monitor.

“Did you send me bullets listing your accomplishments?” he asks.

“I did,” I say. I didn’t.

“Can you send them again? I’m not seeing them.”

There is a five-minute gap while he reads a news article that someone forwarded to the group.

“Did you send me bullets listing your accomplishments?” he asks.

“I did,” I say. I still didn’t.

“Can you send them again? I’m not seeing them.”

Gina knocks on the door and pokes her head in and asks if she can borrow Bob for a minute.

“Can we reschedule?” he asks me. “Put something on my calendar for next week.”

Bob is in New York for a conference next week.

“We really need to get this done,” he tells me. He looks up from his computer. I mean it. He actually lifts his gaze and refocuses his rods and cones in the direction of me. He must really mean it this time. What am I going to do? I haven’t accomplished squat. I’m going to get a mediocre review and get put on probation and have to stay late and take on extra projects and I won’t get a raise and I won’t get a promotion and I’ll be fifty years old and unmarried and still an analyst and I’ll be the laughing stock of the entire agency.

Before I panic I had better double check.

“Get what done?” I ask.

“This updated group contact list,” he says, pointing. He is back to looking at his screen. “It’s way overdue and I just got another email reminder about it from Sally.”

My heart restarts. Gina sits down. I stand up and go back to my office to read cartoons online. In the afternoon I send Bob a calendar invite rescheduling my performance review for next week. Yeah, right. Who am I kidding? I call in sick after lunch and hit the driving range. I may feel better in the morning, but why push it? If I have to miss my presentation we can always reschedule.