I am a reasonably responsible young person.
I have certain responsibilities and always endeavor to take care of them when they need to be taken care of. I might not always get certain things, like my laundry, or perhaps the dishes, done in as timely a fashion as I should, but I don’t skip school, I do my homework and try to do the best job I can on it, I go to work in appropriate clothing and am friendly and helpful to coworkers and customers alike.
And I hate being late. I really do. It makes me feel awful. And once in a while time is not on my side…we leave the house a little late and then hit every traffic light for the longest possible duration, and I hurry through the door of the bookstore with my head down and shame in my eyes. But I really try to avoid the circumstance, preferring to be a bit unnecessarily early if I must fall to one side or the other. And I’m definitely not the type who goes out partying until 4am on a work night and the next morning decides to call in sick or, what the heck, not to bother calling, just to go back to sleep and let the bosses figure out that I’ll be late.
Well, last Wednesday, the alarm didn’t go off. I woke up at about 10:45 in a bleary state of wondering if I was supposed to be somewhere, followed by the sudden panicked alertness of realizing that I was, indeed, 45 minutes ago, supposed to be behind the counter with a smile on my face, ready to sell books. Crap. So I called in and let my boss know what had happened and that I was running late. After caffeine, clothes and driving, I got there at about 11:45. It sucked.
Well, that was not going to happen this week. Brigg’s phone (my usual alarm) was low on charge and so he suggested that, rather than relying on him to wake me up, perhaps I should set my OWN alarm clock for once. Unfortunately it had been a while since I had used it, and though I succeeded in setting the alarm time, I failed to flip the switch that would tell it to go off in the morning. Luckily, Briggs had set his phone alarm and still heard it across the room. He woke up, I showered, caffeinated and breakfasted, dressed and was still running early, and got to work with 15 minutes to spare.
Or so I thought.
We pulled up to the store, and I was rather bemused to see customers exiting the door that should still be locked for at LEAST another 10 minutes. Then I looked at the dashboard clock and my stomach sank.
Although I had gotten up and dressed in a timely fashion, Briggs had been thinking last night that today was a school day, and would be waking up at 10 for 12 o’clock classes. So he set his alarm for 9:45. When I woke up, I went along with my regularly scheduled getting ready preparations, not really paying much attention to the hour side of the clock…with all the different times that my schedule starts, it didn’t really occur to either of us that 9:45 was a bit of a late rising for a 10am work day. So I showed up 2 hours late, and had no clue until I got there.
I explained what had happened to by boss, full of apologies, but of course that doesn’t change the fact that I was extremely late, 2 weeks in a row. She told me that she honestly thought I had quit. She had to take me in back and give me a ‘talk’…which I totally understand, but SUCKED. And also was a bit more extensive than I felt the situation warranted…I mean, I KNEW how bad I had messed up, and the events causing me to do so had been rather anomalous (see paragraph 3). It wasn’t like I didn’t understand that in a retail environment the people scheduled are the number of people that need to be there and if someone is unaccountably late it screws everyone. And it’s not like I’m the kind of person who does this, not like I’m a 17 year old with her first job that pays for nothing but the cute new outfit at Forever 21 and a frappachino, and that I just decide to hang out with my friends instead of going to work. I think a ‘you understand that this is bad and you can’t let it happen ever again or you’ll get fired. we cool?’ would have been sufficient, rather than a five minute discussion detailing why I can’t be late and that my coworkers depend on the other members of their team…blah blah blah. I already knew all of that and already felt awful. I understand the responsibilities of a job and am usually on top of them. I just wanted to yell out, ‘look! I’m not that girl! This doesn’t usually happen to me! I’m not an irresponsible slacker!’ …but to them, well, I’ve only been there a few months and for all they know, I’m a huge flake…all they know is what they’ve seen of me, and what they’ve seen lately is me screwing up.
Anyway, it sucked seven ways to Sunday. And then I cried and my boss felt bad and I felt bad for acting like a basket-case (and, of course, making myself look even LESS together) and then I went in the bathroom and cried a little more and then my eyes were all red, but luckily I had arrived just in time for my lunch break, so I had an hour or so to get myself calmed down.
Anyway, that was my cruddy day. How was yours?
