A Long and Frustrating Day

Today was a long and frustrating day. I had planned to show up here and write one of my typical posts about psychedelics or some philosophical train of thought that I have been riding for a few weeks but I am still too caught up in my own irritation to do that effectively. Instead, I decided to vent for a little while and see if there is something meaningful or valuable that I can pull out of my angry ramblings.

I might be making too much of things. Nothing terrible happened today. No one died, no one was arrested, and I am safe at home in a pair of Rick and Morty lounge pants writing this post. It was all the minor things that went wrong and their combined "weight" seemed to pile up and drive me to the edge of going off in a profanity laced rant in the parking-lot outside of my place of work.

I arrived at the time clock at one fifty-five in the morning and stood around in the empty building waiting for its display to read 2:00 so that I could slide my time card's magnetic strip through the reader. I manged to do that without incident and went to survey the day's work that I had ahead of me. It seemed light which meant that the afternoon crew had been productive yesterday. I smiled and turned to begin setting up my work area when I stubbed my toe against a pallet jack. Those things are heavy and made of thick steel so saying that it hurt is a severe understatement.

When I became convinced that my toe wasn't broken, I began working while I waited for the other employees to arrive. They did and things seemed to be going smoothly. As I said, our work load was light but one of the others took that as an opportunity to screw around for two hours and we ended up being late as a result. Even though the fault clearly belonged to one individual, we all had to hear about how being late on such an easy day looks bad to the upper management and if we keep it up, they will send an observer to scrutinize our work.

Despite my coworker's best efforts, we finished, I clocked out, and I went to smoke a cigarette and drink water in my car. I realized that I had forgotten my gloves inside and I ran back into the building. Upon returning to my vehicle, I noticed that my keys were hanging from the ignition of my locked car. "FUCK" I exclaimed, as I began googling locksmiths and eyeing a nice, big, window breaking rock that was sitting near the gate.

Smashing the window seemed like a dumb idea after some consideration so I dialed the first locksmith that I saw on my search results. The lady who answered the phone said that the "technician" would call me for my location and he did. He said he would be there in fifteen minutes so I waited for thirty before I called him back. "I am in traffic it will be ten or fifteen more minutes" he said with suspiciously little background noise for a phone that is allegedly somewhere surrounded by running cars and trucks. Another half hour goes by and I call him back again. He answers (still sitting in the quietest car in the world) and tells me that traffic is so bad that he isn't sure if he can make it but that he will only charge me $40 to make up for being late if I wait.

The big rock was looking more and more attractive but I decided to call the second locksmith on my search results. Fortunately, this person was more reliable (and more able to navigate the mysterious traffic that only seemed to affect the amazing soundless work truck) than the first. He quickly arrived and told me that the fee was $45 which made me a little more angry at the first guy and his "generous discount." The locksmith opened the door and I gave him an extra ten bucks on top of the price for being fast and drama free.

Still in a bad mood, I came home, ate, and began writing but writing seems to have made me feel a little better. Sometimes, just putting our frustrations out into the world is pretty therapeutic. We tend to bottle things up and that allows them to brew under the surface. Later, those unaired grievances boil over in unexpected ways and we may mistreat someone who does not deserve it or we may overreact to some small inconvenience and make asses of ourselves in public as our result. The point is as follows: If you are pissed off about one thing or another, it is worth the effort that it takes to talk about it. That act might make you feel a little better and if it doesn't, it didn't cost you anything. Is this a weak attempt to inject some message into my public whining? It probably is but that doesn't make it untrue. Talk about things. It's good for you.

Peace.

All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com.