2002-10-16 - 12:11 a.m.

My alarm clock issued it�s 9:45 warning again this morning.

I've been getting up "early" lately, or trying to. I don't have to leave the house 'till around 12:45 or so, which means that if I manage to get up when the alarm goes off for the first time, that's three hours of alone time. I can putz around the apartment, I can check my e-mail, I can look at images on the internet, I can wash dishes. I can perform some random annoying task, like cutting my fingernails, all this, and still have time enough to prepare for work.

I can do it all!

If I can manage it, I can get a good walk in. I haven't yet made it all the way from home to work, walking, but it's coming. (I gotta walk a long highway brigde-over-concrete to get to Lechmere, and the prospect makes me kinda nervous.)

So as I pulled off the covers, I thought I heard somebody talking in the living room.

That's odd, I thought, it sounds like the Metal boss.

When I turned the alarm clock off, I heard.

...issed, dude. The Irish Boss is fucking pissed at you. I'm fucking ripshit. You were supposed to be here at eight fucking thirty for the new Surveyco field module training session. The dude flew all the way from Canada to show us all how to use this fucking thing, and I can't fucking understand a single thing he's saying. You were supposed to be here at eight fucking thirty! What the fuck is going on? SO fucking piss...

I picked up the phone and, not knowing what to do, screamed

Oh FUCK! Oh SHIT! SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK! Fucking FUCK! I can't FUCKing... FUCK! Oh holy FUCKING SHIT!

...FUCK! OH FUCK SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKING FUUUUUCK!

Ok. Well I guess swearing into the fucking phone isn�t going to fucking change anything.

FUCK!

Metal boss then told me that it was just himself, the Irish Boss, another boss that I�m buddies with, and myself scheduled for the training session. Not like the last one a month ago (two 9 am sessions--I made both) the above, and Hecate, the President�s Wife, and a cavalcade of others that you should never ever ever crack a joke around.

So forgetting to come in was then the equivalent of slashing my wrists from left to right, not up and down the vein.

Still, though, not coming into work. Not showing up. That�s like one of the worst things you can do.

I offered to get on the next cab, and was told to just make it in when I could.

I almost cried in the shower. Not over the job, but over being a fuck-up. I mean, for chrissakes. FUCK!

Of course the bus took forever to come, and at Lechmere station, waiting for the train, 50 innocent bystanders and I watched on, bewildered, amused, or mildly annoyed, as two T operators argued over who was assigned to the next train. For ten agonizing minutes.

Got to work at eleven, immediately saw the Irish boss. I made an agonized, contorted face at him, and he smiled back. Thank fucking God. Saw the Metal boss by my desk, and said with all the sarcasm I could muster

It�s not that I forgot, it�s that I don�t care about my job.

That cracked him up. OK. He said

It�s kinda pointless that you�re here, �cause we decided to break until 1:30, when you would have gotten in anyway.

I spent the next two-and-a-half hours hiding from everyone.

Why can�t my job be listening to Guided by Voices and Mary Lou Lord all day?

When 1:30 rolled around, I figured out the portion of the session I missed in about 10 minutes. Fucking figures.

Fuck. I mean, nobody yelled at me, which would have sucked, I guess. But now I gotta wait for my office-karma to clear, and it takes a long, long time for office-karma to clear. ...but he forgot to come in for that training session will finish every office-thought about me at the very least �till the end of the month.

Not good.

I absolutely 100% know that I fucked up. OK, having said that, I would like to mention that the last time I heard about this was at the beginning of the month. The Irish Boss swears that he reminded me on Friday, which is less than true (if someone ordered me to wake up ten minutes earlier, believe you me, I�d remember it for the rest of my life), but there�s no way I was gonna argue that point.

I also had a training session of my own to conduct that night, scheduled from 6:00 to 8:30, that I had been mentioning for a week--you�d think that someone would have put two and two together.

But, actually, nothing annoys me more than when people know they�re wrong, so they come up with accusatory defense rebuttals. Yeah, I set your house on fire, but you left the matches lying around. And the worst? No-one told me I couldn�t.

So I worked 10.5 hours today, felt horrible, and hopefully that was penance enough.

At work, Sunday night, I won five dollars on a scratch ticket. (I�m such a Masshole.) Someone asked me what I would have done if I had won a million dollars. Would I have just walked right out, in the middle of the shift, leaving the interviewers to fend for themselves?

Of course not, I said.

I wouldn�t tell anybody that I had won all that money. I�d work on the weekends to get the overtime, even though I didn�t need it. I�d let my secret lie dormant until someone at the company decided to give me a hard time about something. Then I�d quit.

Of course, I wouldn�t actually do that, and I let the kid know that I was joking, so that there�d be no flight risk rumors.

Actually, (and isn�t it so delicious to think about what you�d do if you won a million dollars?) I�d let everyone know that I was planning on leaving in the near future, and I would stay in the position for as long as (reasonably) necessary, so that they could hire a replacement. And I�d love to train him or her, if they wanted me to.

I might take an hour-and-fifteen-minute lunch break every now and then, and I probably wouldn�t work 13 days in a row. That�s it.

I�m serious. It�s not even about loyalty to the company. It�s just not right to abandon a job when you�re needed.

But it is a nice fantasy.