So last week was our annual plant vacation/close down which left me and my brother in here pretty much alone. We had two shipments of lights to go out to the Government and with no one else in sight, the labeling and e-filing and shipping fell to me…wow! What a nightmare! What should have taken me a hour at the most took TWO days. The reasons varied–mostly stemming from our internal lack of documentation (Lilly will be fixing that this week!) but the culmination came when I had a Government help line specialist yell at me that I had shipped lights improperly and that I would have to wait until they are rejected and returned before it gets corrected. Yikes! I KNOW the difference between Hill and Dobbins and when the duplicate labels I had in front of me said I had (correctly) sent our first shipment to Utah, yelling at me that I had sent lights to GEORGIA…well that was not helping anyone. Needless to say I got it all sorted out and both CLINS are in the proper hands today…but it was really frustrating, and time consuming. Remember the whole flap about the $500.00 hammers and the $10,000 toilet seats the government was accused of buying in the 80s? Well after last week, I think that we need to add $20,000 aircraft marking lights to the list…wait they only cost $40?? Nuts…