8:00 p.m. here in the ongoing hell that is Fresno, with no end in sight. Well, that’s not true, it is in sight — we just can’t make it out clearly.

In a normal radio station traffic department, there is a logical workflow: You do A so you can complete B which allows you to then do C until you wrap it up with D. Not here. Here, they do a little B, then some A, then try to do C but realize they need some more B so they try D but that requires A… It’s maddening. And so we’re sitting here watching them chase their tails with about 30 minutes worth of work that has taken them two hours so far. When will they finish? Who knows.

Why don’t I step in and help out? I can’t. I’ve tried — multiple times — and they’re just not listening. Or hearing. Or they think they know better or… Who knows.

One incident from this morning highlights how impossible it is to work with these people: One of the women asked me how to do something, so as I looked over her shoulder and told her exactly what to click on and exactly what to type, she began madly click-click-clicking away everywhere except where I had told her to click. It was kind of scary, actually, this manic explosion of mouse-pilepsy. She ended up making several changes that were going to have very unfortunate results, and then when she tried to close the window (without my telling her to), the Save screen came up. Hit No! I said. Don’t save it!

She saved it.

I nearly went ballistic. Instead I just bit my tongue while my blood pressure went through the roof, turned around, and walked out of her office without saying another word. And that’s when I stopped caring about how well I’m doing my job here. I have a flight out of this shithole town at 12:55 tomorrow afternoon and my only goal now is to make it ’til then without completely losing it and taking someone’s head off. This last week on-site is all about babysitting the client while they do all the work anyway, so I’m just going to let them play with knives until 10 tomorrow morning, when I walk out the door and leave Fresno behind forever.

I’ve never watched a clock this closely before. And time has never moved so slowly.