Thanks, DJ.
The short version: we've been trying to complete some administrivia paperwork requested by one of the financial mucky-mucks in our hospital. We've never done this before, and I work with chaplains--NOT the most bureaucratically gifted people on the planet on the whole. Just before I left for Alabama, we got an email from the mucky-muck saying he needed such-and-such data, but it'd already been arranged I wouldn't be dealing with the issue until I was back and I was only cc'ed on it anyway, so I filed it in the appropriate Outlook folder and left it at that.
When I got back last week, N, my boss, said, "Remember that email from Mucky-Muck? We need to send him X information from FY06." So I tracked down the data and sent it off.
I then got a phone call from Mucky-Muck that was all, "I don't know what this is that you just sent me, but it's not what I was looking for, and anyway, as my email CLEARLY STATED, I need the data from FY07."
I don't have all the information he wants readily to hand, mostly because we had no idea we'd be expected to provide it and weren't keeping the kind of records that would make it easy to pull together. But there's also the fact that I started on 5/29, which means I was only here for a month of FY07, and I wasn't in on the start of this whole process and don't really understand what's going on, which only adds to my confusion.
I ended up sobbing in N's office just after my previous post, and she assured me that SHE didn't think I was stupid and ignorant, that she understood I couldn't drop everything to figure it out what with a new batch of interns due in two weeks, and that we'd work together to sort it out. She then went up to talk to another department that's done this before and came back with a template they use, a contact name, and the assurance that Mucky-Muck's bark is worse than his bite and she hasn't started hers yet either.
So. Feeling better. It's nice having a boss who's on my side.