No stupid questions?

Here's a common lie: There are no stupid questions.

I recently received an e-mail from my boss asking for an update on a few things I have been working on. Particularly, he wanted an update about tasks that have taken more than 5 days. I didn't know if he wanted to know why they were taking more than 5 days, or if he wanted an update about how they were progressing. The difference is subtle, but I wasn't certain of what he wanted in the update.

So I asked. I guess that I was the only person to ask (the same e-mail was sent to most of us). Even though he was vague with his request, and even though I could see two possible and different yet correct answers to his request, I was the only person who asked. So to my boss it appears that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, because he was not able to anticipate that there could be 2 different yet correct answers to the question.

BTW, he wanted an update on each case that was taking more than 5 days. And this is probably going to be a new task for us to do each day. Just one more example of adding more straws to the camel's back. And then when we complain about our workload, they will point to metrics that show we have had fewer calls than 6 months ago, so we have no room to complain. Yeah, but 6 months ago we didn't have 10 extra daily tasks to do.