It’s official. My employer now has me too terrified to sleep.
It all started a couple weeks ago, when I was late for work. Happens to the best of us, I know. Someone should have told them. Apparently, here, being late for work is inexcusable. Even the lowliest of level one support technicians is a vital cog in the machine, and said cog getting a five minute late start in a 9 hour day is unacceptable and ultimately harmful.
It should now be said that a week later, I came in two hours late for work.
That’s bad. I know that’s bad. I really do. I’m not trying to say, “Hey man, I should be allowed to be two hours late every day, I do what I want.” I’m not trying to say that by any stretch of the imagination. All I’m saying is, some times, these things happen, due to unforseen and unfortunate circumstances. My alarm clock not going off meets both criteria of that particular alliteration.
The day I was two hours late also happened to be the day I was scheduled for my 30-day performance review. Oddly enough, my performance review was late, and was being given on day 45. So we can assume that my alarm clock had lied in wait for this moment a full fifteen days after it was supposed to happen. My alarm clock has been in on it the whole time.
I entered the performance review knowing that I was going to get fired. This wasn’t one of those hunches, where you’ve been tipped off by body language, or you’ve shoulder-glanced some emails with your name in them. I flat out knew I was going to get fired, and it was going to be harsh.
I didn’t get fired.
It was threatened, sure, but it didn’t happen. “I know of places that fire people for less,” my manager said. “You shouldn’t even be a minute late, not in your first ninety days.” I know that. “Your alarm clock not going off is not an excuse.” Well, technically, it is an excuse. It’s just not an acceptable one. I kept that to myself; I don’t want to crack out that gem in my first ninety days.
(It should be noted now that the Dictionary definition for the word excuse contains several example sentences, all of which involve making an excuse for being late. I do not find this ironic in any way. To know why, look up the dictionary definition for the word ironic.)
I escaped my performance review unscathed for the most part. In fifteen minutes, we’d spent a good twelve of them mulling over my excessive tardiness, rounding out the session with a terse three minutes explaining how my performance in every other way is exemplary. I won’t assume that this is what spared my job — such people don’t seem to care about exemplary performance. I have a theory on this. It’s my opinion that finding people who know how to do this job, and people that have what it takes to do this job well, is easy. Finding people with the work ethic to come in ten minutes early on a Monday is not.
Fast forward to Monday morning. Early Monday morning. Two a.m. Monday morning. I sit at the edge of my bed, staring at my cell phone. I’ve now tested the alarm twice to make sure it will go off when the screen says it will. Somehow, this has done nothing to put my mind at ease. My eyes shift back and forth between the clock and the phone several times, before I realize they are the same object. A thought occurs — I need a real clock, one that doesn’t take a back seat to text messaging and dropping calls.
It’s now two-fifteen in the morning, and I’m digging through my closet for a clock. I have to be at my desk in roughly 6 hours. No, let’s be accurate. I have to be there in 5 hours and 45 minutes. Rounding time is what got me into this mess in the first place.
Two-thirty a.m. I have a sleek black digital clock in my hand, ravaged by time spent in a box that I probably packed when I moved out of my first apartment. (I’m on my third apartment.) I check the bottom. No backup battery. I’m placing a tremendous amount of faith in Florida Power and Light at this point. I plug it in and set it to the current time, which is now two fourty-six a.m. I wonder how it took me fifteen minutes to get from the closet to my bed, and realize it’s probably because I’m so tired. I wonder if getting to work five minutes early is worth all the trouble, and then I remember that managers don’t typically make idle threats when it comes to firing people. They love firing people.
After getting the new clock set up, I lay back and proceed to stare at it. I try desperately to get to sleep for another fifteen minutes. Every time I feel sleep coming, I startle myself awake at the thought of seeing 9:22 on the face of the clock the next time I open my eyes. I wonder if maybe I should just eliminate sleeping before work from my life, instead co-opting some sort of hybrid schedule in which I am awake for the first four hours before I’m scheduled to be at work. This way, even if I oversleep by like two and a half hours, I’ll still be able to get to the office before 8am.
My alarms all went off in sequence this morning. First, my cell phone calendar reminder woke me up at six a.m. sharp. Shortly after that, my alarm clock went off. After snoozing that, my cell phone alarm went off. I chose to turn that one off rather than snoozing it. Right after I did that, my alarm clock went off again. I was not going to be allowed back to sleep.
I made it into work on time this morning. I ran into several co-workers in the parking lot, including my boss. He gave me a curt nod before deciding to take the stairs rather than the elevator. I looked between those remaining and wondered if any of them had fought the same sort of battle that I had, just to get here on time. I wondered if any of them had been terrified of falling asleep, for fear of not waking up.
Honestly, I don’t even care.
Tags: Harrowing Tales
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Marc, this is hysterical. Probably because once or twice I have been in a similiar situation or know others who have as well. LMAO! I truly did. Good one!!!