NEW CASTLE —
Have you ever had one of those days? A day that just bombards you with every conceivable inconvenience? Not big, earth-shattering or life-changing things, but events that make keeping your head up just a little bit harder. Well, today was that day for me.
It started with a blaring alarm at 6:40 a.m. I reached over in my sub-human state and hit that glorious snooze button. Another nine precious minutes, I thought as I cozied up to my ever-so-soft pillow. Next thing I remember was thinking somebody needs to stop making that awful noise. As I slowly slipped from my comatose state, I managed to crack open one eyelid just enough to see that the clock read 7:04. I had slept through the alarm for 14 minutes. Great! Now I'm late! I rushed out of bed, threw on the first clothes I found, and scrambled into the bathroom for a quick tooth brushing and to use the toilet.
I stood with my toothbrush firmly grasped in my hand and my blurry eyes staring back at me from the bathroom mirror. My disappointment grew as I reached for the toothpaste. The tube was empty. I squeezed and twisted to no avail. No time to worry, a quick sans-paste brush had to do.
I splashed some water on my face and out the door I went after untying the mother-of-all-knots in my shoelaces.
As I was pulling out of the driveway, I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror and realized that I had done nothing to my hair. There I sat, looking like Gene Wilder. Great. What a day so far.
I made my way along several miles of winding country road and reached the stop sign at the end. As I pulled to a stop, the fuel light came on. This blazing orange light taunting me, as if to say, “No, you will not be at work on time today.”
I pulled into the closest gas station and noticed the the price was now $3.94. It was just $3.84 last night. As I stood there pumping that precious fuel into my car, I could feel my messy hair flailing around in the wind. I also could taste the dank residue of my morning breath as I tried to recollect why I did not stop last night and get gas.
I finally made it to work. When I punched into our computer system, I was greeted with a message notifying me that I was already punched in. Turns out, in my haste to leave yesterday, I did not punch out. Now I have to get a manager to override my punch and fix my times from the day before.
The work day was mostly uneventful, unless you count the entire building's network being down, which forced a technician visit and thus, a motherboard replacement on our server. One would think that a hardware replacement would solve our problems. Not today. It did repair the initial problem, but in turn created a software issue with our payment system and basically rendered us dead in the water.
The software issue greeted me with several calls to our support service which, in its infinite wisdom, employ technicians who have only an elementary grasp of the English language. Can you say, “outsourced?"
The only other problems at work were fixing a printing job that had the backside run upside down, sending out a quote to a client that I had done the math completely wrong on, and being informed that at some point in the day I needed to find an extra hour or so to do an online video training. Fun, fun, fun.
Finally my shift was over, and only 1 hour and 15 minutes past my scheduled time.
When I got home I got the mail and there were three lovely pieces waiting for me. First and foremost was the bill for my car insurance — $1,100 due, so nice! The second and third were those white envelopes with windows from the bank. I knew exactly what that meant. Overdraft charges! I opened them to find that my business account was charged a quarterly fee from my web hosting company, which overdrew my account. To add insult to injury, on two separate days I purchased a 16 oz. bottle of pop for $1.50 each. These two transaction also triggered an overdraft fee of $36 each. In essence I paid $72 for two 16 oz. bottles of Dr. Pepper. Now, that’s a bargain!
The rest of the evening did not reveal any real frustrations. So, now I'm off to bed in hopes of washing the slate clean and starting tomorrow fresh and new. Please pray that I don’t trip and impale myself on some seemingly harmless object.
Josh Drespling
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About Josh Drespling: Josh is a former graphic designer at The News. His blog appears each Saturday.
Discussion
Josh Drespling: One of those days
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