Remember, It Could Happen To You

This week I have held a steady spot at about a 1.5 on the luck-o meter. Stuff just hasn’t been working out so well for me. However, ever the optimist, it can only go up from here.

If you have ever worked in a restaurant, or at least seen the movie “Waiting”, you are familiar with the cardinal rule of never f**k with the people who handle your food. The disgust of watching that specific scene of the movie “Waiting”, combined with the reality that I was raised in a family full of laid back push-overs, has resulted in the fact that I never complain in a restaurant. I just don’t. It makes me feel weird. My dad hates seafood. One time he ordered a burger and got delivered a plate of fish and chips and ate it instead of sending it back. His reasoning? Well, the waitress was nice and I didn’t feel like waiting any longer for my food to come. It’s just how we are.

So Monday night I had to go out to dinner with about 15 of my colleagues after we sat through a leadership training session all day. These are the events that you usually dread going to, but once you’re there you realize it really isn’t all that bad. You eat free food and get to watch some of your quiet co-workers get a little boozed up and say inappropriate things. It never fails that I am always the youngest one at these events. Because of this, I always try to go out of my way to act mature and composed. I don’t drink too much, and when I do I try to order a “mature” drink like a nice glass of wine, when I really want a pitcher of cheap beer.

All was going well. This is until the waitress brought over a tray of ice water and spilled a full glass all down my back. And when I say glass I mean like large-pizza hut size glass. It felt like a tub. Actually, one of the executives compared it to a football team dumping the gatorade barrel on their coach after a flawless victory. Another who was already two beers deep joked about how lucky I am that it wasn’t down the front.

I, of course, felt bad for the overly apologetic waitress and sucked it up. Luckily, I had the office mom sitting next to me who pampered me with an endless supply of napkins. Many of my co-workers stood up for me and complained to the manager. The first complaint I could live with. But then as the bad service continued, more complaints ensued. I could picture Ryan Reynolds hocking a loogy in my asian chop salad.

The bad luck continued when I walked into the office 15 minutes late the next day and got a sweet morning welcome from the office hater as I removed my smelly cashmere coat (it got drenched in the water incident the night before).

“We’ve already met.” Insert nasty side glance and the snotty “snuff” look.

“Um, OK. Morning. Wait…what?” Was my fantastically managerial response. Leadership training what?

Long story short, I missed the email about the early morning meeting and hence decided to come in later than I am already supposed to on usual days.

So now here I sit, two days after the water incident and one day after the meeting missing incident waiting and wishing for my week to improve.