Normalcy. What exactly is that? Is that the way a person's average day is? Or is it the average day of people in general? If it is the former, I don't really like normalcy that much. If it is the latter, AM and I aren't normal (several people would argue the latter is true regardless).
AM's job, like most jobs, is cyclical. In her department, things aren't too hectic for the first week or so of a month, but get progressively busy for the following weeks. This goes through to about the second to last day of the month, then the "slow" period starts again. During the busy period, she almost always has to put in a day on the weekend so they can make their deadlines. Most of this could be avoided if the company would sufficiently staff her department, but that would be the logical, though difficult, thing to do. Instead, they would rather heap emotional distress on the few employees they have, constantly increasing the demands. All this without giving any real reward.
Unfortunately, even adequate staffing through the majority of the year wouldn't be sufficient for the yearly rollout period, which hits her department in February. Since her department is understaffed to begin with, she was slammed. Over the last month she worked 27 days straight. Putting in an average of 10 hours per day. Saying she was exhausted would be about the same level of understatement as saying the Big Bang was just a firecracker.
So now that the month is over, she was hoping to relax a little and catch her breath. It doesn't look like that is going to happen, as they are now testing a new database for her department. The testing is taking a lot of time, and most of it is failing miserably. I wish she would just stop caring about it and let it fail, but that isn't in her nature.
Thankfully, her parents are coming out to visit the middle of this month, and she has actually taken the entire week off. She'll actually get to miss part of a processing cycle this month, which will be very good for her.