I’ve always found it weird that people say “Fine, thanks” when asked “How are you?”. In the months after I moved here and someone would ask me “How are you?”, I would actually tell them how I was. “I’m a bit sad, just had a phone conversation with my friend and her mom is sick but hopefully she’ll be ok” or “I’m stuffed, just got back from lunch, they had the chicken special today, did you know that if you eat the entire thing you get a bad stomach ache?” and so on. But now I know. Nobody gives a crap, it’s just a greeting and that’s that.
I’ve also noticed that people never say “really crappy” when asked “how was your day?”. They generally say “Oh, it was one of those days”. Ah. Got it. One of THOSE days. Yup.
I had ONE OF THOSE DAYS yesterday. As a personal rule, Tuesdays are my worst week days because Monday is right after the weekend and you’re still a little bit in that state of mind, Wednesday is Hump day, you’re past the middle of the week and Thursday and Friday is practically weekend but Tuesdays are hopeless. However, this time it was a Thursday that turned out to be extremely crappy.
It started out with no warning - I wore a nice dress and cool shoes to work given that I had to go to a client meeting across the street and the morning was sunny, traffic not too bad, and I wasn’t desperately late for work. However, soon enough I started getting seriously off track when I got stuck in meetings all day with barely any time to get ready for my meeting and when it was time to go, I step outside and the rain starts poring down as if it was coming from a bucket.
Got to my meeting soaking wet, the client was late so I had to sit there in my soggy dress and ruined shoes and then run the meeting as if nothing ever happened. Gross and cold. Yuck.
After getting back to the office, even more meetings (which gave me no opportunity to change, dry or at least warm up) and then finally time came for me to go home. I was soooo looking forward to my car’s heated seats to dry off my dress…
However, as soon as I get on the elevator, push the button, go down to P3 - the elevator stops and I realize I’m trapped three floors under ground with no cell phone signal and nobody else around. I did hear some noises outside the door and I started banging and yelling and actually thought that someone was coming but minutes passed and there was no reply to my ”hello! hello! can you hear me?” cries.
I sounded the alarm bell repeatedly but nothing happened, nobody answered. There was a “Call” button which rang to an answering machine asking me for the extension that I was interested in. You have got to be kidding me…
Eventually, I managed to get a tweet out from my blackberry (thanks iPhone for letting me down) “I’m stuck in the elevator at work.” My boss saw it and called the building manager. I later found out that they were getting ready to leave but he managed to convince them that, no, the elevator is not only broken but there is someone actually trapped in there. If it weren’t for him, I would probably still be in there. So thanks.
After over an hour, someone finally came and let me out of there. I was kind of dizzy because there was very little air in that place so I didn’t even have the energy to lash out at them, I just walked to my car and drove home. In poring rain.
And then I found that my dog has crapped all over the house. Welcome home.