A Tale in Two Parts

So, I have yet another tale to tell. This one will be in two parts. One happy. One not so much. Such is life.

So, yesterday, I had a total Losers' Club day.

Started off with a 7:30 am conference call, taken on the 7:33 train into Boston (express from Salem!).

Two hour meeting with CBL to go through budgets, punctuated about every 20 minutes with her telling me wildly inappropriate stories about my coworkers and her boss.

Then, the fit really hit the shan. We - make that I - needed to pull together materials for an upcoming "train the trainers" event happening in Mexico next week. Basically, we need to teach people how to teach people who teach people. There will be 20 of these "Master Trainers" in attendance. I had to create ONE folder for all of the trainers to use during their training and ONE sample folder of all of the materials they would be handing out when they actually started training people themselves. The problem is, a lot of the documents were duplicates. And some looked only very slightly different. It has to get to MX by Saturday so it HAD to leave yesterday. It was an operational nightmare.

So, I'm in the midst of all of this chaos, documents piling up around me, the phone ringing off the hook, me walking miles in circles around my cube (in heels because "sneakers are inappropriate workplace attire) putting together packets of information... At one point CBL comes in to ask me, "um, what's the name of the marketing platform we use again?" I was at that very moment on the phone with one of my copy/print companies telling them they produced 2x as many of one doc we needed and none of another doc we needed. I looked at ye olde CBL and nearly screamed. "Um. Can't do this now. Sorry. No." And turned back to my phonecall.

Later, I did actually her office, armpit sweat-stained and hair disheveled to answer her question (whilst waiting for alluded to document arriving). This must have kicked in the guilt genome because a few minutes later, she came over to my office, leaned in the doorway and casually asked (as I wore treads into the carpet) "anything I can do to help?" Um, yea. Join the assembly line, bitch.

OK, so, finally I get it all done, boxed up and ready to go. Oh yea - the mailroom guys are all new so I have absolutely no confidence at all that it's going to get there on time. But que sera sera.

I missed the 6:30 train, no matter, I'll catch up on email. Ten minutes to 7 - before the lights go out and the cockroaches come out - I left the building. I hoof it to the train station, stopping in at a nearby burrito joint on the way to get a veggie burrito to go.

The guy behind me orders a chicken burrito and we kill the more than 10 minutes waiting making small talk about the crazy weather, the election, and the earthquake relief efforts.

I get to the train station, tired, cranky, dissheveled and hungry. I unwrap my burrito and take a huge, honkin bite.

It's the chicken burrito.

I barely make it to the public bathroom in time to vomit and then begin dry heaving. Have I mentioned, the last time I ate meat was almost 20 years ago and the meal that turned me was chicken?

So, yes, folks, that was my day. I finally made it home, 14 and a half hours after leaving it. I was cranky, I was clammy, I was hungry, I was tired, and I was sore. But, it also gave me the best line of the year.

Me to BFF: "I have to tell you my Losers' Club story. I swear, I think I had a worse day than Martha Coakley."

BFF to me: "Niiiiiiiice!"