A Disasterous Day
How does a disasterous day start? Well, for me it started the night before. I allowed myself more computer time after coming home from work than I should have. So I didn't get to bed until 1:00. I had to be at a mandatory nursing conference the next morning. Registration started at 8:30 and lasted until 9:00 with the conference starting promptly at that time. Now I'm the type of person that needs to be there 15 minutes before the registration starts. Mostly because I really hate going somewhere strage by myself. This way I can sit in my car until I spot my friends then go in with them. Additionally, I set my alarm 2 hours before I need to be somewhere as a general rule of thumb.
So Wednesday night I stumbled to bed at 1:00 a.m., set my alarm for 6:30 and was asleep within minutes. I abruptly awoke to a ringing phone which always gives me a bad feeling. Feeling quite disoriented and in a fog, I answered the phone. It was the wife of a SEMMA rep wanting to know if she could send me a fax. As I chatted with her I fully came to my senses, realizing this was the morning of the conference. I glanced at my alarm clock and was horrified to see it was 8:16. I was supposed to be there in 14 minutes to register and was already a minute late by my personal standards. I'm really amazed I managed to carry on a lucid conversation amidst my panic. One thing was certain, I wasn't going to have time to wash my hair which for me is quite distasteful.
I'm quite proud of the fact that I managed to get to the conference by 8:55 even if my hair was flat as a pancake, in fact, flatter. Miraculously, I didn't get a speeding ticket either. But even though I attended to necessities such as brushing my teeth, I just felt like I didn't do them justice and spent the whole day feeling as though I had bad breath and kept checking to make sure that buttons were buttoned, etc. I wish there were such a thing as a bad breath detector because I haven't figured out how to smell my own breath.
To make matters worse, the conference was running just a little behind schedule. We were scheduled to dismiss at 2:30 and I had to clock in by 3:00. So the last session was adding to my distress since I HATE to be late anywhere. I certainly didn't want to get written up for being late to work. I managed to squeek into work at the last second.
So now could I relax? No, I was told that we were having system problems. They were currently ok and not experiencing any symptoms, but watch out! Just great. The last day I had run the system we were down from 3:30 until 9:30. I spent most of those 6 hours on the phone talking to all 19 of the plants we process for giving them multiple updates, answering their questions, reassuring them that we were working on the problem but weren't successful yet, handling psychotic managers, and instructing them on how they could run their machines in the meantime (even though I have no clue whereof I speak). After we came up, it was another 19 phone calls to let them know that we were up and then handling the blitzkrieg of volume for the rest of the night. Is it any wonder that I was cringing at the word that we were experiencing system problems again?
Thank the good Lord, I had no more system problems that night. The only thing I had to worry about was looking like a skin head and making sure nobody got close enough to smell my breath, just in case it was bad. And in retrospect, I thank God for Thelma waking me up at 8:16. But couldn't he have prompted her to send me that fax about an hour or two earlier?
So Wednesday night I stumbled to bed at 1:00 a.m., set my alarm for 6:30 and was asleep within minutes. I abruptly awoke to a ringing phone which always gives me a bad feeling. Feeling quite disoriented and in a fog, I answered the phone. It was the wife of a SEMMA rep wanting to know if she could send me a fax. As I chatted with her I fully came to my senses, realizing this was the morning of the conference. I glanced at my alarm clock and was horrified to see it was 8:16. I was supposed to be there in 14 minutes to register and was already a minute late by my personal standards. I'm really amazed I managed to carry on a lucid conversation amidst my panic. One thing was certain, I wasn't going to have time to wash my hair which for me is quite distasteful.
I'm quite proud of the fact that I managed to get to the conference by 8:55 even if my hair was flat as a pancake, in fact, flatter. Miraculously, I didn't get a speeding ticket either. But even though I attended to necessities such as brushing my teeth, I just felt like I didn't do them justice and spent the whole day feeling as though I had bad breath and kept checking to make sure that buttons were buttoned, etc. I wish there were such a thing as a bad breath detector because I haven't figured out how to smell my own breath.
To make matters worse, the conference was running just a little behind schedule. We were scheduled to dismiss at 2:30 and I had to clock in by 3:00. So the last session was adding to my distress since I HATE to be late anywhere. I certainly didn't want to get written up for being late to work. I managed to squeek into work at the last second.
So now could I relax? No, I was told that we were having system problems. They were currently ok and not experiencing any symptoms, but watch out! Just great. The last day I had run the system we were down from 3:30 until 9:30. I spent most of those 6 hours on the phone talking to all 19 of the plants we process for giving them multiple updates, answering their questions, reassuring them that we were working on the problem but weren't successful yet, handling psychotic managers, and instructing them on how they could run their machines in the meantime (even though I have no clue whereof I speak). After we came up, it was another 19 phone calls to let them know that we were up and then handling the blitzkrieg of volume for the rest of the night. Is it any wonder that I was cringing at the word that we were experiencing system problems again?
Thank the good Lord, I had no more system problems that night. The only thing I had to worry about was looking like a skin head and making sure nobody got close enough to smell my breath, just in case it was bad. And in retrospect, I thank God for Thelma waking me up at 8:16. But couldn't he have prompted her to send me that fax about an hour or two earlier?
posted by Sara | 7:58 PM
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