Yesterday was a pretty crummy day all around. I was just feeling out of sorts all day, and having that why-is-this-happening-to-me kind of overreaction to everything. I, like much of the Western hemisphere, hate my job and was really feeling it as soon as I got to work. And I let everyone around me know it too, snapping at my least favorite professor when he tried to take over unjamming the copier for me that, "I can do it myself!" I was in this mood most of the morning and it just kept growing as I thought about how much I want to be teaching or doing something else, anything other than answering phones and ordering supplies and directing lost students.
Then I had to hike across campus to pick up a tablet PC from our tech guys, who I already have a secret feud with - secret, as in they don't know we're feuding - because of the fact that they've put some stupid software on our PC's that means we can't update or download anything. Anything. Like I can't even change the time on my clock because I don't have 'administrative privileges' to do such a thing. This of course means no iTunes, which means that my office music listening is limited to Yahoo! Launch, or worse yet, the radio. The radio?! I don't even know how to use one of those anymore.
Anyway, the tech office is located in the basement of the honors' students dorms, and aside from being a half day's hike away, the only way to get into the basement is to have one of the uber sharp RA's let you down. So I had to stand at the elevators with this kid (who by the way had the nosehairs of a decades older man and needed to learn how to prune those babies, lest things get caught up in there) waiting for the elevators to arrive and the students to empty out completely so I could take my ride down to the secret tech fortress in the basement alone. I shouldn't complain. This part only took ten minutes. Finally, one of the elevators empties, Nosehair directs a couple waiting students to the other elevator, he turns his key to unlock the secret floor, he hits the button for me, and I am on my way. Except the elevator doesn't go down. It goes to the top floor, where a group of students gets on. And then it stops on every single floor on its way back down to the lobby, where Nosehair stands, staring at the elevator, completely befuddled. And yes, I just used the word 'befuddled.'
Eventually I make it to the secret fortress in the basement, only to find that the tech guys don't know anything about a tablet PC for my department. I remark about how amusing that is, considering that they called to tell me it was ready just a few hours earlier. Two of them wander around the offices and labs, randomly picking up laptop bags and sort of looking for it and asking me who the laptop is assigned for and when it was dropped off, to which I respond again and again that it was a tablet PC, not a laptop, and I don't know when it was dropped off, only that I was told to pick it up just a few hours ago. After fifteen minutes of this buffoonery, I tell them that they can just figure out what happened and I'll come back later. Upon hearing this, they suddenly find my tablet PC in plain site, sitting on a workbench three feet from where I stand (maybe they do know we're in a feud). I get some bogus explanation that it should have been sitting on another table - the "pick up" table - to the left of the work bench, which would have indicated it was ready to be picked up. Then I find out they tested it and nothing was wrong with it; the instructor who sent it over was just plugging the cord into the wrong slot.
Over an hour after I left my office for a twenty minute errand, I made it back and was immediately met by two professors who needed manila folders (on the top shelf of the supply cabinet - "See? Right here.") and whiteboard markers (also in the supply cabinet). Then the dean's office called looking for the chair, who needed to sign a form, and blah, blah, blah until it was almost three-thirty and too late for me to take the lunch I had planned to take when I returned from the super secret tech fortress.
So at four-thirty, like I do four days a week, I closed my door and changed into my khakis and freshly-ironed oxford shirt to head off for a night of table-waiting. And as I walked to my car, I told myself I had to get out of this funk, that I needed to hustle at the restaurant and be cheery and wonderful and score some big tips, and I was just starting to feel a little better as I rounded the corner into the parking lot and out of nowhere a bird pooped on me.
A bird dropped its load on my clean, pressed shirt and all over one of my shoes.
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