Propagating stress and how it trickles down the food chain.

I will venture to give you the short version. Here's the story:

The boss stresses over an upcoming presentation.
Liz stresses to get the presentation 'client-ready' for the meeting the next day.
Liz stresses to get the presentation printed and delivered to the boss's hotel.
Liz is running out of time.
Liz creates a PDF that was taking much much much too long.
See Spot RUN! (sorry, I was suddenly reminded of the book!)

I digress.

Okay, the telling of the short version is failing me, I'm going for the long version instead.

With very limited time remaining, I spent an hour waiting for the PDF writer to make the PDF version of the very long presentation. Time was flying by me and the PDF writer was just crawling. Watching the clock is such a grueling process, be it that you're waiting for time to pass or praying that the hands of time to slow down for you. Anyway, the PDF writer finally finished its job and I sent it off to be printed. (www.mbe.ca is offers SUPERIOR customer service. GREAT GREAT GREAT business solution specialists if you're in a wrinkle to get things printed last minute and delivered on time!)

You see, at this point, the boss has already left for his business trip believing that everything is under control because he finished his part. His stress trickled down to me and after I completed my part too, I passed it onto the Jean-Francois @ mailbox etc. I also asked that he kept me informed as to the status of the print order.

Their deadline was 6pm for timely delivery the next day. Their printer ran out of toner thus missing the deadline. Luckily, they got in a special request for the 9:30pm deadline. They finished and drove out to UPS at 9pm. They made there just in time. My boss got his package this morning as he checked out of his hotel and headed out for his presentation. He (I think) is happy that things are done.

As you can see, stress is propagated from one person to the next and it does trickle down. Boss -> me -> JF

It should never bubble up by the way, it's just not professional that way.