I should have known when I woke up to Eric’s alarm at 6:30 this morning, an hour and a half after I was supposed to be at work, that it was Thursday the 12th. Most people are more familiar with this dreaded day’s lesser cousin, Friday the 13th, but I can tell you, sitting here with a splitting headache, that Thursday the 12th is the one you have to look out for.
My day started bad yesterday, when I got home from dinner with my mother-in-law and her boyfriend and went straight to bed. I was exhausted. I was so exhausted making sure I had my alarm set slipped my mind. Thus my waking with Eric’s alarm 2 and a half hours after mine usually goes off. I called the store, and they were nice about it, but I had already let myself down. I practically flew out of the house, forgetting my coffee, and laying the foundation for this current headache.
We share a parking lot with a church, IE we have to pull into their lot to get to our driveway. As I’m running out to the garage, I notice that the church has blocked off the entrances/exits to the parking lot. This made me livid; they complained to our leasing agency once because the yard was a little crazy after four days of rain – on the first sunny day, when we could have mowed in the first place! And then they make it a struggle to get out of our own house?!
Once at work, things were fairly straightforward, and for the most part, it was fine. My managers had a sense of humor about my being late, and I offered to stay for my full shift hours, so that I could help ensure the truck was unloaded. I spent the first two hours with a load of boxes that I unpacked and stocked. Then I moved onto restocking some of the wedding stuff, only to find that the planograms that my associate set yesterday were backwards. That means we get to redo them next week.
It wasn’t just me. People around me were having bad luck, too. Items missing, employees being late, and customers wanting to make bogus returns were just a few. (Hint: I was the employee that was late)
At noon, I clocked out, made a few more self-deprecating jokes, and went on my not-so-merry way. I had had no caffeine, so my head had already started to pulse; I didn’t pack much to eat, so I was pretty hungry. I got home and found no coffee in the pot. Since we’re going up North (again) this weekend, we don’t have much in the house food-wise except what we have for dinner tonight. I decided that I deserved to have food delivered to me, so I looked up the number for Jet’s Pizza and called.
But it was apparently the wrong one because they said they didn’t deliver here. They were nice enough to give me the number for the other Jet’s that does deliver, but at the time, the only thing in my mind was “are you kidding? I can’t even order a pizza right today”. I wallowed in self-pity for about two minutes before calling the one closer and ordering.
The pizza was good. I had some soda, too, but it was too little too late.
These are the horrors of Thursday the 12th – the little things that stack up to make your day a grinding pain. The worst thing is that I failed myself. Sure my managers understood my being late, and they weren’t terribly angry, but I failed to maintain my own expectations.
In answer to this dreaded day, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything really awesome. So instead I drew a picture of Deadpool. Here it is, in stages:
You say Polymath like it's a bad thing... 