I Need A Break!

Did you ever have one of those days where you think it would have been better if you had just never gotten out of bed? I think we've all had one, haven't we? I'm nearing the home stretch of just such a day today. Actually, it started last night when I got home from work at 11:00 pm after an eleven hour day.

The alarm went off TOO early at 5:00 am, which is actually thirty minutes later than usual. I hit snooze three or four times (my snooze is set for one minute, so I really don't have time to fall back to sleep), before finally turning the alarm clock off and dragging myself out of bed.

I arrived at work at 7:40 am after a two hour commute, which was more heavily laden with traffic than my normal commute just thirty minutes earlier in the morning. It wasn't worth the extra thirty minutes sleep to start my day off so far behind schedule.

I was naturally tired all morning after the late night last night, and the workload has been pretty heavy lately. To make matters worse, my Assistant Manager called to ask to come in two hours later than scheduled due to illness. I said, "Sure," thinking better late than never.

At 12:30, I had an employee not show up. I don't usually call people who don't show up for work on time. I just let them face the music whenever they do show up for work. But with the day turning out a little too stressful, I decided I better make an exception this time (this same Associate called in sick yesterday, which probably played a role in my decision to call him). I left a message that was never returned, and the employee showed up an hour later having misread the schedule (a frequent excuse for him).

At about 1:30 pm, my Assistant Manager called again, still sick, saying he wouldn't be able to make it in at all today. That was definitely NOT what I was hoping for at this point. It meant only one thing: I would be staying until closing time again tonight, and wouldn't be home until after 11:00 pm again -- after more than fifteen hours of work (with no lunch). It's part of the territory, so I deal with it, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it.

At 3:30 pm my wife called to tell me that the Mail Carrier that delivers to our house had knocked down our mailbox and driven off without a word. I immediately called the Post Office to complain, then the Police Department to file a Report. At the Officer's urging, I then called the Postal Inspector in Indianapolis, who later called me back to say there was nothing she could do. The representative at the Post Office branch later called me back to say that the Mail Carrier didn't run over the mailbox after all. She claims that it was so rusted at the base that it just fell over. He asked me if anyone had seen her hit the mailbox. "The neighbor boy was outside, so if she hit it he would have seen it. I'll find out from him tomorrow. Either way, it doesn't excuse the fact that she didn't knock on the door to let us know that the mailbox fell over on her. Especially since she delivered a package to the door, anyway. It just doesn't look good." He went on with his denial, so I interrupted, "It's okay, I filed a Police Report and we'll deal with it that way if we have to."

My wife called some thirty minutes later to report that someone from the Post Office had come to the house to look at the mailbox. She looked at it with him and concluded that rust indeed had played a role, but that the Mail Carrier had obviously tried to cram an oversize package in the box, contributing to it's demise. Not enough liability for them to pay for a replacement, but he did apologize for the situation and said they had addressed the situation with the carrier.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, I recorded a short "goodnight" video on my Palm Zire 72 and emailed it to my wife to play for my son. She just called me and played it for him as he was getting ready to go to bed. He made her play it for him three times, then wanted me to sing him a song over the phone. I sang him a few lines of his favorite Wiggles tune, then told him "goodnight." It was the perfect interruption to a very stressful day.

I sit here now with roughly ninety minutes to go before I start my two hour commute home. I'll crawl into bed after peeking in on my son (the first time I'll actually see him since 10:00 am yesterday), and fall to sleep (hopefully) some time before midnight. Tomorrow morning, I'll wake up and, among other things, try to fix the mailbox.

I need a break!

Joe