San Francisco

Tomorrow we are leaving for San Francisco. Our flight leaves at 7:15 am. That's very early. We should probably be at the airport by 6 am which means we will most likely leave our house at 5:15 am. Whew.

This week has been tough at work. A three day week when you have a lot of work to do isn't always the best thing. I put myself under a lot of pressure to be the most efficient I could be and today it was too much. I snapped. I yelled at this stupid dispatcher at W**** Messenger Service in Long Island. I need these boxes to be picked up tomorrow afternoon in Long Island and delivered to my office in the city. The printer who did this rush job for us didn't know how many boxes out brochures are going to fit into because they were still cutting and folding everything, so we estimated 12 -- but that estimate wasn't good enough for the messenger service. No. THEY NEEDED TO KNOW THE EXACT NUMBER OF BOXES PLUS THEIR TOTAL WEIGHT AND DIMENSION. So, I was good. I hadn't quite lost it yet. I called the printer back and asked what the dimensions were and they laughed and said "WE DON'T KNOW." So I called back and told the messenger service it's about 12 boxes give or take and described the job to her. She repeated that she needed the exact measurements, blah blah blah, so I WENT OFF ON HER ASS and told her that SHE'S THE EXPERT. SHE DELIVERS PACKAGES ALL DAY LONG. COULDN'T SHE FIGURE OUT WITH THE PRINTER HOW MANY BOXES THE PRINT JOB WOULD END UP BEING?

It went on like that for about a minute, cried for about 4 minutes. I went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, brushed my teeth and gathered myself. Then I returned to my desk and called the messenger service back. Someone different answered the phone. Without apologizing I asked them to send a van and told them the job would be about 12 boxes give or take and made sure the job went through. Oh yeah. . .then the printer decided to inform me, NOW THAT THE JOB IS FINISHED BEING PRINTED THAT THE JOB IS C.O.D. and asked me how I wanted to pay for it. That did it for me. I had to call my boss who left early so he could be with his wife at the hospital because she had been in a car accident earlier today (she's okay).

So naturally I felt like a failure but my boss made me feel better and told me that this company was being very unprofessional, and that he knew they had never mentioned anything about a C.O.D. payment, and that this is a sleazy practice that some companies engage in as a mild form of blackmail to make sure they get paid for a first job, or something like that. I felt bad because I didn't want to leave something unresolved like that but he was cool about it. So . . . I guess I really deserve to go away in the morning on a nice trip to San Francisco where I've never been before.

I've been to Santa Cruz and Monterey and Carmel but not San Francisco.

I can't wait. Hee hee.