~Tuesday~ The bus was running a little late this morning. It’s almost always at my stop by 8:25. Today it came at 8:30. Fortunately, I still made it in time for my 9:00 meeting.
I had three meetings today. Two involved food.
The 9-10 one was our department meeting, to which I brought sausage biscuits, Rhonda brought Granny Smith apples, and Jude brought bananas.
I ran across the street to grab a lunch sandwich in the Food Court Atrium off The Brickyard, which was just a laugh. I can’t even begin to describe the rows and columns of lines of students waiting across the several venues in there. Crazy.
I settled for an over-priced sandwich from the nearby coffee shop with the unfriendly owner, and I took it to a lunch gathering time set aside by my boss’s boss (Stan) “just because,” which was attended only by me, my boss, and Stan. Oh well.
The third meeting was a subset of the Student E-mail Initiative team who are working on the communications plan for rolling out “Google Apps @ NC State” whenever the contract negotiations finally complete.
My afternoon was nonstop work, most of it spent creating project websites for various budget reducing strategy projects and strategic organizational projects, with the goal being to eventually have all such projects providing fairly consistent project information.
There have been very few days, in the almost year now that I’ve been riding, that taking the bus to and from work has gotten on my nerves. Today was one of them.
- 5:50: Arrived at the credit union for the 6:10 bus
- 6:10: No bus
- 6:15: No bus
- 6:20: Called CAT to get status on where the bus was, and got a busy signal. I don’t understand getting a busy signal for a line on which once you get in you get put in a call queue.
- 6:20:15– 6:20:30: Redialed five times in quick succession to get past the busy signal.
- 6:25: Got through, and put in the hold queue as “all agents are currently assisting customers.”
- 6:26: My call was answered and the agent put me on hold while she checked on the status with the dispatcher. I was on hold too long without someone clicking back in to say, “Sorry it’s taking so long…” When she finally came back on she said, “I couldn’t reach the dispatcher. Wait just a few more minutes and if it still hasn’t come call us back.”
- 6:27: I see a bus coming around the corner up the street, and as it gets close enough to read its number and destination, instead of saying the expected, “#12 METHOD,” it said, “OUT OF SERVICE.” As it zoomed past me, I put my hands up in the air as if to say, “WTF???” and the driver pointed behind her over her right shoulder, I guess meaning that another one was right behind her.
- 6:35: Okay, obviously not right behind her. I called back, got the busy signal again, redialed several times again, got through again, and silly me expecting the person would have heard back from dispatch by now, heard, “Let me check with dispatch on that bus.” Again on hold too long, but finally got, “That bus broke down. The 6:40 one should be there soon.”
- 6:35: I thought, “No shit, Sherlock,” and asked, “Okay. Where is that bus right now?” to which she answered, “I don’t know, she didn’t give me that information.” I bit my tongue about saying something about her possibly thinking herself about asking the dispatch that question while she had her on the line. But I digress into a world where customer service actually matters and people think for themselves…
- 6:42: Next bus arrives, and it had the grumpy driver who told me to slide my card the last time when a ticket was already in the slot as if someone had just left it, and I resisted going off on him about how I know it works in the slot, too. Today, as if I wasn’t already pushed to the edge, there was a card sticking out of the slot again, and one in the middle of the slide. I went to remove the one in the slot to use it, and he pointed me over to the slide as he removed the one that was sitting in the middle of it. Bastard. I just took real deep breaths and thought of that infamous line, almost at least, “Our long national nightmare is over.” At least I’m on a damn bus.
Today I started following @shitmydadsays on Twitter. His profile says, “Name Justin. Bio I’m 28. I live with my 73-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says.” One of his recent tweets:
| “How the fuck should I know if it’s still good? Eat it. You get sick, it wasn’t good. You people, you think I got microscopic fucking eyes.” |
LOL!
Since I got home so late, I didn’t do jack tonight.
I did brown some hamburger and made some Mongolian Beef out of it with a marinade packet. Absolutely love that stuff.
I read some of Moonlight Becomes You, which I’m enjoying quite a bit, I must say.