Heath's Random Thoughts

Bad Commute = Bad Day At Work

Warning - Lengthy Rant to Follow....

Ok, so I have determined that I can predict the sort of day I am going to have at work based souly on how my morning commute goes with about 95% accuracy! For example, today everything was fine until I got on the Purple Line Express to head downtown to work from Evanston. At first, the ride went fine but shortly into the trip this big dude, who apparently needs his seat and half of mine sits down next to me, squishing me up against the wall. I would have stood up but it is a relatively long ride and the train can get pretty packed the closer to the loop it gets so I decided to stick it out in my seat. In the mean time, Mr. No Personal Space, next to meet dozes off. Thankfully in the opposite direction. As the train heads south it begins to get into this pattern of stopping, then going 10 feet, and then stopping again off and on throughout the ride. All the while it is getting packed. Next about 3 people get on my car that are apparently heading out of town for about 10 weeks based on the amount of luggage they are dragging around and they plop down right around me. Once we were good and full we get stopped between stops and are told that there is a medical emergency at the stop directly in front of us and we had to wait until the paramedics showed up to help the person. So after about 20-25 minutes of sitting in a cramped train we finally start moving again. We eventually get to the loop and about one stop before mine I decide to stand up and get my backpack situated. As I am doing this the conductor decides to slam on the breaks throwing me forward where I slam my shoulder into one of the hand rails! I final get off the train and get to work.

I was all settled in for a productive day and put the commute behind me when I get a bunch of frantic emails from my manager saying I need to start jumping on multiple calls regarding issues we are having. I pointed out that we have someone who is on call for that, only to find out that she is out sick today and that "I need to stop worrying about my own projects and start worrying about the company." Well, as you can guess, this got me in a real cheery mood, because anyone who knows me, knows I bust my butt to do the best job I can. I was just trying to make sure that we were following the process we set up, not try and get out of extra work. At any rate, I have had to cancel all my meetings today to sit on a bunch of conference calls and listen to our support folks scratch their heads on what is going on with our systems. Riveting, really.... So as you can see its been a wonderful day so far and it all started with the crappy ride in. I can only hope the commute home is smoother! Thank you CTA!

posted by Heath @ 2:03 PM