Today, I had 3 different
bosses trying to make me work on three different
projects.
Consequently, I got about 1/2 each of 2 of them done (I had to put the other guy off entirely).
Why do so many jobs make you feel worthless? Sometimes I feel like I have no
responsibility. Like I couldn't make a positive
contribution to the company's
bottom line if I wanted to, because my
job is specifically designed to prevent it. Granted, I have very few of those days, although I have
worked jobs in the past where every day was such a
nightmare.
Today (actually, yesterday, I'm revisiting this), I was particularly
depressed about not really
accomplishing much. I mentioned it in the daylog, and I'm talking about it
again here. Other than work, it was a great day.
Not every bad day at work is great otherwise, though. And so I present...
MY WORST EVER DAY AT WORK
Also: How I got the nickname Storm Damage
In
September of
1998, I got my
driver's license suspended for not paying a
ticket on time. Well, since I
delivered
pizza for a living, having a
suspended DL was not a
good thing. I went to the county clerk, and paid the ticket, and took the receipt to the
Department of Motor Vehicles to get my license reinstated.
It is important to mention at this point that a
hurricane was approaching the
city that day, and was expected to hit town in the late afternoon. The reason this becomes important now is because I was turned away at the door of the DMV by a
note saying everyone had gone home to prepare for the
storm, and come back in two days when they would reopen,
weather permitting.
Well, as luck would have it, I was scheduled to work that night. Yes,
delivering pizza. Yes, in a hurricane.
If you've never driven in a hurricane, it can be kind of scary. It's not like what you'd
expect though. Mostly, it's just
pouring down rain. Like about 20 gallons hit your
windshield between
wiper swipes. But then every once in a while a
gust of wind nudges your car, and that's when you're in
danger, because you tend to
overcorrect. And overcorrecting on an oily
Florida road in the rain is a bad thing.
Fortunately, this isn't a story of
how I flipped my pickup and disfigured myself.
However, i did have to dodge
flying debris a few times. And you can't imagine how many
pies I had. Sure
my boss was a pig for staying open during the storm to take advantage of the "rain rush". We were the only place in town who did. But on the other hand, we did a LOT of
business that night, and I cleaned up pretty well on tips.
Anyway, when 2:30AM rolled around and we were closed for the night and I was delivering my last pie, the storm had mostly abated. I
cashed out,
tired,
worn out,
really pissed off with stress from working the storm, and in a hurry to get home and smoke some serious
pot,
squealed out of the parking lot to go home, cutting off a
cop.
d'Oh!
Flashing lights, glowering pig. Suspended license, threat of arrest.
This cop grilled me. I
explained that I had paid my ticket, had the receipt, and tried to take it to the
DMV but they were closed, but since he had bothered to pull me over, he wanted to try and get me for
something...
anything.
This pig was giving me a
sobriety test (I guess he has no faith that a professional driver would
stay sober on the job), searching me, tearing my car apart searching it, and coming up dry on everything (the herb was at home). I don't remember if he gave me a ticket for not having a license or for my busted headlight (yeah, I got that fixed the next day too), but I felt really oppressed by him.
So anyway, I made it home, feeling like shit, not even really wanting to get high anymore. I got home, to the house I had just moved into a few days earlier, to discover I had locked my keys inside.
I had had it.
I was not going to
wait around in the patchy rain all night to call the
landlord in the morning. Nobody else had a key, and I hadn't made a
copy to
hide under a rock yet. So I grabbed a
stick and
broke a window on the door to let myself in.
The next day, I called up the landlord and told them what happened.
"Yeah, this tree branch blew through the window last night during the storm. I hung a plastic bag over the hole. Do you think you can send someone over to fix it?"
My
friends loved the story. They all pointed at the "
Storm Damage" I had made and laughed.
Now, I'm a fairly
clumsy individual. I tend to break things. Plus, I'm kinda messy. So as you can imagine, before long, my friends would make comments about the "
Storm Damage" that had hit my apartment, and woul laugh out "Whoops!
Storm Damage!" whenever I would trip over something and
break it. It became the
running joke about me, and I started signing my
emails to them with it, and then using it widely as a
nickname online.
Most of my friends still call me
Johnny in person, though.