"Inventory is boring. In the islands they don't make you do stuff like take inventory. Why do think so many businesses moved to the Caymans?"

So work has been sucktacular lately. I've been working a ridiculous amount of hours while I watch my coworker gallivant around enjoying the beautiful weather and witness my bosses oovoo into the office from the beach to show those of us actually in the office how awesome the water in South Carolina is today. Assholes! I promise when I'm boss I will not torment the peons in such ways.


So anyway, I'm working on this huge project that involves basically justifying our entire economic development (ED) strategy to the Governor and the state department of development in order to secure future ED funding for the region. Which on a surface level seems fairly straight forward. I mean this is the stuff we talk about everyday. This is our bread and butter. This should totally be a cake walk, right? WRONG! One would think that our "strategic industry clusters" were decided on based on some sort of regional industry analysis or ED forecasting or something, but it really wasn't as far as I can figure out. It was essentially a concept agreed upon by the boss and the executive committee as the direction they thought would be good for the region. So now I'm pretty much hunting around looking for data and random studies that can support this concept. I totally agree with the direction we are going in so it's not a stretch for me to find enthusiasm for this project, but seriously... What the hell?


So while working on this project it occurs to me that I've tapped into the fundamental flaw of most public policy. We too often make the decisions first. Someone gets a "good idea" and goes with it allowing someone else to figure out how to verify the course. In my case I'm lucky because the boss's intuition seems pretty on the mark as I'm easily finding the data points that I need to justify what we are doing and I'm anticipating that the presentation to the Governor will go well (hopefully tens of millions of dollars worth of well, no pressure or anything.) I'll just be happy when this whole project is over and I'm the one drinking a beer and soaking up rays.