Didn’t happen today, but on a day that is still in the history books as A Very Bad Day for auntie em. It was a cold, cold, wintry day, with an ice storm in the making, but ever-dedicated to the preservation of my girlish figure, I hit the gym before work as always. When I got back in my car to drive the three blocks to work, I discovered that I couldn’t back out of the parking space; the spaces were on a decline (so that the nose of my pickup was lower than the rear end), and everything was caked with ice, so the truck wasn’t budging. I went back into the gym to ask the nice lady at the front desk if it would be OK for me to leave my car parked there (I wasn’t at a meter or anything, but I was in a 2-hour parking zone) and walk to work, maybe come back at lunch and try again.
She offered to get some of “the guys” to help me get the car out of the space, and after a couple of minutes, three large, burly men were bundled up and out in the cold, giving my truck the super-heave-ho while I perched in the driver’s seat, gunning the engine.
And they pushed.
And I gunned.
And they pushed.
And I gunned.
It took a mighty long time, and a mighty effort, but at long last, the truck was out of the parking space!
As I waved my thanks and paused to shift from reverse to first gear, a fourth guy came walking out of the gym and hollered, “Hey! You’ve got your emergency brake on!!!”
I wanted to die right then and there.
But alas, the day had more in store for me.
You see, I had been the point person in setting up a big annual meeting that was to take place on that day. Needless to say, when I got to work, I immediately started calling all of the participants to let them know that the meeting would be cancelled because of the weather (in fact, when I arrived at work, I already had phone messages from a couple of participants - one of whom pointed out that it was “slicker than snot” out there - who were calling to see if the meeting was still on). I had to crank, because I only had a couple of hours before the meeting was to start, but I finally made it through the entire list of would-be attendees, and called the sandwich shop that was to cater lunch for the meeting . . .
. . . and then, of course, I got a call from the facility where the meeting was to be held. Somehow, alerting the kind folks at the meeting facility that the meeting would no longer take place had not even occurred to me. And it gets better. Seems one of the meeting attendees was at the facility, madder than a hornet, and confused as hell, because he’d shown up for this meeting and nobody else was there.
Oh, crap.
You see, when I’d gone down the list of meeting attendees to let them know about the cancellation of the meeting, I hadn’t been able to reach him. His phone had rung and rung, without even an answering machine or voicemail, so I’d moved on, vowing to try him again at the end.
Which I then forgot to do.
And boy, was he mad.
In the end, I placated all offended parties from that day with free food; I went to a nearby restaurant and bought gift certificates for all of the big, burly fellas who’d worked so hard against emergency brake odds to get my car out of the parking space (though it was SO hard to walk back into that gym!), and when the big annual meeting was finally rescheduled, I gave the one guy who’d shown up for the cancelled meeting his catered lunch for free.
Food fixes a lot of things.