Suzy Says

Living on the edge

You may have noticed that I rarely complain about work, when I can and do complain about almost everything else. If there were an Olympic complaining event, I’d be clanking with gold medals, a living legend. Though I’d probably still complain about the Olympics and how they’re constantly on TV*.

Part of this has to do with the fact that my boss is a comfortable 200 miles away, and has no idea that I’m wearing pajamas during conference calls (or doing them at the beach while walking dogs). Also, he’s been my friend for fifteen years, and we sometimes go to ball games** and plays together.

My commute is pretty easy, other than the kittens getting underfoot as I lurch down the stairs in the morning. Sure, I often end up working at night or on the weekends, but I don’t have to go to an office from 9 to 5, or brave the perils of BART.

My sister, however, doesn’t have it so easy…

She worked for 14 hours on Monday, arriving home late Tuesday morning. She didn’t sleep well in the sunny, warm day (it was probably 85 here, and it was a scorching 103 in Santa Rosa and 113 in LA), and woke up, sleep-deprived, to face another 12 hour shift on Tuesday night.

To make matters worse, she discovered that her car’s steering mechanism had gone on a sudden French-style strike and refused to work. You really don’t want to be driving the switchbacks around here with no steering. I don’t think Megan was that anxious to meet her old buddies on the ambulance.

So she borrowed my car to go to work. She was already late, and had to stop and pick up a car part so our brother could work on the car today. Halfway there, she realized that she had left her cigarettes in her car. She arrived at the store about five minutes before the store closed, and said she was picking up a part.

“What part?”

“I don’t know. It’s a steering thing.”

“For a ’96 Saturn?”

“Yes!”

“Your brother called and said you wouldn’t know what the part was.”

$114 later, she was out the door and on her way to Starbucks. She took one sip – one sip before a 12 hour night shift – of her expensive coffee before it spilled all over due to the stupidity of the cup holder design in my car. Minutes ticking away, she cleaned it up as best she could and went to get gas for the car, since the gas station was right there.

She pulled up to the pump and discovered she was on the wrong side. Turned the car around, put in her credit card, and discovered that the pump was broken. Went to another pump, and discovered that she was on the wrong side again. She gave up and went to buy cigarettes – a necessity at this point – and rushed to work.

As she went through the ambulance bay, she asked one of her former colleagues to pick up a coffee for her, which he cheerfully did.

This morning, she dropped the part off at our brother’s place, and he and Rob will hopefully be able to fix the car in time for tonight’s night shift.

*My cure for Olympic boredom? Make it all pay-per view. Then all of you who really want to watch it can pay for the privilege, and the rest of us can go on with our lives, uninterrupted by the seemingly endless ennui that is the Olympics. That, or restore to its original semi-nude form with only original games allowed.

**Go, Giants!