There I was — out with a buddy from work, driving around wasting some time after lunch. The day had been pretty good so far. I hadn’t heard a peep from my boss all day (his office is in another building a few miles away from mine). It was about 12:30, and I was looking forward to wasting a little more time, going back to my office, then quietly slipping out the door around 1:00 or 1:30.
Ordinarily, I would consider this level of slacking somewhat unreasonable [emphasis being on somewhat]. However, today was my birthday. Yesterday, the day before my birthday — a Sunday — I was called into work at 03:00 AM. Running on a mere 3 hours of sleep, I suffered through about 6 or 7 hours of work Sunday morning. You think you have an annoying boss? Try putting up with an annoying boss at 03:00 AM. Wow – it sucks.
So anyway, after Sunday morning’s fun-fest, I was tired and annoyed that I was working on my birthday. So, back to driving around on the clock — I get a call. It’s my boss. Great. I could just see my plans to escape work a few hours early come tumbling down before my eyes.
“Charlie?” says the boss. “I’m having a staff meeting at my office, 2:30. I’ll see you then.”
“Damnit!”
I was pissed. Seriously, a staff meeting? My boss supervises two other individuals besides me. Great. So I head back to my office, address a quick issue, and then drive over to the boss’s place. I find a fellow ham-dork co-worker and talk for a while.
Aside: Said fellow ham-dork co-worker gave me a 400 Hz CW filter for my Icom 718 HF radio as a birthday gift. He even installed it for me! Nice guy.
After talking about radios for a few minutes, the boss finds me. “Come on, guys. Time for the meeting.”
“Ugh.”
I grumpily follow my boss to our designated meeting area….
“Surprise! Happy Birthday, Charlie!”
“D’oh! Er, I mean, Woo-hoo!”
I simultaneously felt relieved (no stupid staff meeting after all), yet annoyed (I totally played the fool).
Yep. They got me with their Faux Staff Meeting.
All in all, it could have been worse. I could have been suffering through a meeting — instead, I was just pressured into eating twice as much ice cream cake as I should have.
Despite being one year closer to death [insert ironic emoticon here], I had a pretty good day. Thanks to everyone!
Umm, yeah... I'm gonna need you to finish off that ice-cream cake.