It's often less the "manager schedule" that is the problem, but getting screwed into complying totally with the "customer schedule."

The one that has been the bane of my existence for years now is the 9AM daily call with the customer that is on Europe or Delhi time. It just destroys the day when you start things off with that kind of thing, and get immediately tossed into placating and containment mode. Then whatever you thought you might be able to do for the day gets tossed out the window in order to react to the latest fire drill before the next call. It's entirely reactive, rather than proactive, and it is soul crushing.

It's almost lunch time now, and I haven't done anything worthwhile yet today, other than try to bring some kind of order to this chaos and triage.