but at least I still have a job. For now...
Day. From. HELL!!!
So, I leave home an hour early because I want to spend some time before class starts to brush up on some points I wasn't entirely clear on the day before. Highways are pretty clear, so I'm making good time. Then the engine cuts off. Just as traffic suddenly picks up. I barely made it onto the left shoulder (right shoulder was out; I'd have killed myself trying). So I turn the car off and just let it sit for a couple of minutes in case it's just a fluke. Turn it over again, but even completely flooring it, I couldn't get her to go any more than 20mph. Out of the question. The nearest exit was miles away and traffic was way too busy for me to try to switch shoulders. So there I am with three lanes of heavy 70mph traffic between me and the side of the road I needed to be on. Because, sure enough, my cell-phone charger is apparently on the blink because the damned thing had no power.
Took twenty minutes for traffic to clear up enough for me to safely cross three lanes. Couple miles to the nearest exit, then it took me a hotel, two gas stations, and a remote Cleveland Clinic campus before I found a pay-phone. Then I trudge back to the exit, back up the highway, another 15 minutes for a break in traffic, and down I sit to wait for the tow-truck and muse on the fact that I am now an hour late for the start of class and have no way of contacting them because, while they GAVE us emergency numbers, they don't actually allow us to take paper out of the building.
Okay, here's where the fun really starts. I'm so freaked out that I can't remember my own sister's phone-number. The two-truck driver made an executive decision not to bring me to the garage that BP suggested to me because it's not even in the same CITY as my job and he knows a good place two blocks from the office. Good for him. I may have to get an Angie's List account just to give this guy the shout-out he deserves (especially since the garage he actually brought me to was closer than the one BP wanted me to go to which meant the tow cost less). The mechanic's nice but, being both nice and honest, his place is packed and he's not going to be able to get to my car until Saturday or even Monday. Whatever. I'm going to need a rental car anyways at this point.
So, I take a cab the two blocks to the office, give him my credit card info and go inside. Both trainers are out of the room in a meeting. I am now three hours late to my shift when they made it clear that this would almost certainly result in termination. So I get to look forward to 20 more minutes trying to figure out whether I still have a job. Which is bad enough.
15 minutes later, a runner comes in and says that there's a cab-driver in the lobby making a police report because some chick gave him a bad credit card and the company claims no such person works there (turns out the guys who man the security desk don't have access to the student rosters. Manage to get that sorted out (he had transposed two numbers and he, the cop, and I all agreed that the security chick was a moron for not thinking to check whether or not one of the THREE HUNDRED new people in the building is named Katherine).
Then it's back to classroom two, where the shit REALLY hits the fan because by now HR has now been clued to the fact that I was a no-show/no-call. One of my trainers spent 45 minutes behind closed doors arguing with the head of HR about why I needed to be kept around.
So I still have a job and will be allowed to make up the time and training that I missed. However, if I miss even one more minute of classroom time in the next seven-odd weeks (regardless of the reason), I'm fired and there's nothing Gloria will be able to do about it.
Okay, so still too freaked out to be able to remember my sister's number and no one in my class is going to go 75 minutes out of their way to drive me home at that hour (nor am i comfortable with the idea of getting into a car with a complete stranger in the middle of the country). I check online, but nowhere on the farm's website is there a contact-number; they do it all via email because they don't want just anyone able to contact them (which is also why they're UNLISTED). No Greyhound station in the vicinity, naturally. After trying out more than 20 variations of what I thought their number might be, I had to concieve the inevitable and call a cab company. Which tells me it'll cost me $230 minimum to get home. Can't stay in a hotel because I have meds that I need at home. So I tell them to send the cab at 11:30.
One of my classmates overheard and mentioned it to Gloria, who put her foot all the way down. "That's too much for a trainee with financial problems!" The woman scoured the building for someone who lived close to me. Best she was able to find lived in Cleveland, but he was more than happy to take me at least that far (he probably would have taken me all the way, but he has a wife waiting at home so I made him go home instead). My first ever ride in a Corvette :) So he takes me to a cab company in the suburbs and waits with me until the cab comes.
Driver says he's never had a sober customer at that hour on a Saturday, lol. But I got home for less than $60 instead of over $200. Got home, saw that the problem with my sister's number was that I had a seven where there should have been an eight. Oopsies. Her number is now written on a slip of paper in my wallet.
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that TeleTech is good people. Not many employers would go that far out of their ways to help out a kid who's been there for four days.
Okay, I'm off to pass out now. I've got a long day tomorrow, what with needing to arrange for a rental car, get in contact with the garage, allow myself extra time to get to work because, like the idiot that I am, I left the GPS power-cord in my car, so I need to find work the old fashioned way *thumps self on the back of the head*
So, how is everyone else going?
So, I leave home an hour early because I want to spend some time before class starts to brush up on some points I wasn't entirely clear on the day before. Highways are pretty clear, so I'm making good time. Then the engine cuts off. Just as traffic suddenly picks up. I barely made it onto the left shoulder (right shoulder was out; I'd have killed myself trying). So I turn the car off and just let it sit for a couple of minutes in case it's just a fluke. Turn it over again, but even completely flooring it, I couldn't get her to go any more than 20mph. Out of the question. The nearest exit was miles away and traffic was way too busy for me to try to switch shoulders. So there I am with three lanes of heavy 70mph traffic between me and the side of the road I needed to be on. Because, sure enough, my cell-phone charger is apparently on the blink because the damned thing had no power.
Took twenty minutes for traffic to clear up enough for me to safely cross three lanes. Couple miles to the nearest exit, then it took me a hotel, two gas stations, and a remote Cleveland Clinic campus before I found a pay-phone. Then I trudge back to the exit, back up the highway, another 15 minutes for a break in traffic, and down I sit to wait for the tow-truck and muse on the fact that I am now an hour late for the start of class and have no way of contacting them because, while they GAVE us emergency numbers, they don't actually allow us to take paper out of the building.
Okay, here's where the fun really starts. I'm so freaked out that I can't remember my own sister's phone-number. The two-truck driver made an executive decision not to bring me to the garage that BP suggested to me because it's not even in the same CITY as my job and he knows a good place two blocks from the office. Good for him. I may have to get an Angie's List account just to give this guy the shout-out he deserves (especially since the garage he actually brought me to was closer than the one BP wanted me to go to which meant the tow cost less). The mechanic's nice but, being both nice and honest, his place is packed and he's not going to be able to get to my car until Saturday or even Monday. Whatever. I'm going to need a rental car anyways at this point.
So, I take a cab the two blocks to the office, give him my credit card info and go inside. Both trainers are out of the room in a meeting. I am now three hours late to my shift when they made it clear that this would almost certainly result in termination. So I get to look forward to 20 more minutes trying to figure out whether I still have a job. Which is bad enough.
15 minutes later, a runner comes in and says that there's a cab-driver in the lobby making a police report because some chick gave him a bad credit card and the company claims no such person works there (turns out the guys who man the security desk don't have access to the student rosters. Manage to get that sorted out (he had transposed two numbers and he, the cop, and I all agreed that the security chick was a moron for not thinking to check whether or not one of the THREE HUNDRED new people in the building is named Katherine).
Then it's back to classroom two, where the shit REALLY hits the fan because by now HR has now been clued to the fact that I was a no-show/no-call. One of my trainers spent 45 minutes behind closed doors arguing with the head of HR about why I needed to be kept around.
So I still have a job and will be allowed to make up the time and training that I missed. However, if I miss even one more minute of classroom time in the next seven-odd weeks (regardless of the reason), I'm fired and there's nothing Gloria will be able to do about it.
Okay, so still too freaked out to be able to remember my sister's number and no one in my class is going to go 75 minutes out of their way to drive me home at that hour (nor am i comfortable with the idea of getting into a car with a complete stranger in the middle of the country). I check online, but nowhere on the farm's website is there a contact-number; they do it all via email because they don't want just anyone able to contact them (which is also why they're UNLISTED). No Greyhound station in the vicinity, naturally. After trying out more than 20 variations of what I thought their number might be, I had to concieve the inevitable and call a cab company. Which tells me it'll cost me $230 minimum to get home. Can't stay in a hotel because I have meds that I need at home. So I tell them to send the cab at 11:30.
One of my classmates overheard and mentioned it to Gloria, who put her foot all the way down. "That's too much for a trainee with financial problems!" The woman scoured the building for someone who lived close to me. Best she was able to find lived in Cleveland, but he was more than happy to take me at least that far (he probably would have taken me all the way, but he has a wife waiting at home so I made him go home instead). My first ever ride in a Corvette :) So he takes me to a cab company in the suburbs and waits with me until the cab comes.
Driver says he's never had a sober customer at that hour on a Saturday, lol. But I got home for less than $60 instead of over $200. Got home, saw that the problem with my sister's number was that I had a seven where there should have been an eight. Oopsies. Her number is now written on a slip of paper in my wallet.
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that TeleTech is good people. Not many employers would go that far out of their ways to help out a kid who's been there for four days.
Okay, I'm off to pass out now. I've got a long day tomorrow, what with needing to arrange for a rental car, get in contact with the garage, allow myself extra time to get to work because, like the idiot that I am, I left the GPS power-cord in my car, so I need to find work the old fashioned way *thumps self on the back of the head*
So, how is everyone else going?