The stressed run businesses run...

I swear they never used to advertise on TV until I needed to shut them out of my head.

Work continues at a similar pace with just a little under three weeks to go before we go live with the new system. Everyone knew it was never going to be a walk in the park but there are an increasing number of concerned-looking faces tearing about the place. Mine included.

It wouldn't be so bad if there were more colleagues, customers or suppliers leaping in to sing the praises of how wonderful it is, how easy it was to set up, or how dramatically it's changed their businesses for the better.

I could even live with a few horror stories if they didn't almost always end with "Well, I pity the poor bastard who's got landed with preparing master data". To anyone who isn't in the know, it either scores a cheap laugh for sounding like some kind of onanistic pastime or makes the job sound as meaningless as the one Chandler always struggled to describe in Friends.

And that's so not true...