Puzzled

I usually like jigsaw puzzles and crossword puzzles.  I think it comes from me having an orderly personality, trying to put things together in the just-right way that makes sense.  That's why I'm having trouble at work.

This morning, I tried marking all of the sites from the route sheets that my boss gave me onto the map issued by the school district.  However, not all the route sites were shown on the map, and not all of the map sites appeared in the routes.

My boss didn't understand my concern.  "That's not your crew.  Those sites are mowed by a different crew."  Okay, that explains why they're on the map and not the route sheets.  Now what about the others?  Some of the route sites are closed schools, so they don't appear on the map.  (For some strange reason, three sites which my boss marked as "sold" schools still do appear on the map.)  Some of the route sites are empty lots, so they don't appear on the map.  The rest of the route sites were not mentioned by my boss, so I don't know.

So what do I do if my boss tells me to go to Smith School, but I don't know how to get there because it's not on the map?  What if I see on the route sheets that Crew 4 will be at Jones School today, but I don't know where that is?  How was I supposed to know that the route sheets and the map wouldn't be in agreement?  It felt like I was trying to put together a puzzle, but the pieces weren't fitting together, and then my boss comes in and says, "Oh, you don't have all the pieces."  At this point, I was smart enough to recognize that my boss couldn't handle any further discussion, so I went on to another topic.  (Let's not even get into how I'm supposed to know about the bus lots around town.)

After lunch, I stopped by the front office and asked the women there if there was a map of all the school district's properties.  The two women there knew that there was, but neither of them knew how to get a copy -- but if the secretary (that's what they called her; don't yell at me for using an "archaic" term) wasn't off today and the rest of this week, and if the office manager wasn't occupied preparing for the district's award banquet tomorrow night, either of them could've helped me in a heartbeat.  It was the same situation when I asked for a discplinary form to write up an employee.  Instead, we just chatted for a while about my apartment search and what parts of town I shouldn't think of living in.  (Please note that I wasn't keeping them from working, as the computer program and/or website they wanted was acting up, so they needed something to do in the meantime.)

On a more upbeat note, my boss was driving me around, trying to locate some of the district-owned, empty lots that even he wasn't aware of, and we got really close to two of them but couldn't figure out, of all the empty land with no street addresses handy, which parcels of land were ours.  I pulled out my new device (I mean the iPhone I whined about the other day; I almost said "my thingy", which I thought might sound too suggestive) and -- miracle of miracles! -- managed to open the maps feature, enter the street we were seeking, find it on the map, and pull our location up as a blue dot exactly where we thought we were!  Yay, I figured out one bit of technology!  (I still want that instruction manual, though.)