To Work, or Not To Work: In which I call shenanigans.

Vzzt-vzzt-vzzt!

It was 7:58 a.m.  The phone was ringing.

I shoved my hand underneath the couch pillow from where I lay in bed.  The phone had time for one more vzzt! before I was able to answer it.  The word that went “Hello” in my head came out sounding more like “Hrmmvm.”

Let me be straight here.  I was not ready for this.  Today was my day off.  I arranged to at least get Tuesdays steady off so that I could be home for housekeeping/extermination inspections.  Today that was especially important because my fridge is acting kind of stupid.  So it was with considerable irritation that I listened to my supervisor explaining that she’d really like it if I came in today.

I’d had a two-day stretch of 16-room clipboards.  That meant a minimum of 12 hours in two days.  That sounds good, but anyone who’s done it before knows that housekeeping in seriously grueling work.  I explained my situation—that I’d need another day this week to rearrange my fridge fix, and that since she’d called right on top of the 8:02 bus, I’d have to wait another half hour before I could actually leave.

“I’ll be there in an hour and a half,” I concluded after a little more “rrgl-rrgl-mrrgl-mrrgl”-ing.  I raided the fridge, threw some random but wholesome food into my lunchbox (actually, it’s a small cooler), threw my iPod and ‘phones on my head, and got outside just in time to see the bus pulling up.

The commute’s most interesting feature?  A cocky guy behind me with a lisp who was griping at his girlfriend misunderstanding directions loudly enough to hear through noise-cancelling ‘phones.  I was happy to get off that bus.  I tromped through the snow and into the building, put away my food, and found my supervisor.

“Um, what are you doing here?”

Um…what?  “I made it here, like I said I would.  Just waiting for my marching orders.”

“I said I didn’t need you today.”

No, she didn’t.  “No, you didn’t.”  I recounted the phone record.

“You said yes at first, then you said something else.”

“Yes—that I’ll be an hour and a half before I got here.”

“But you weren’t clear about it.”

“What I said was—”  And this went on for about fifteen minutes before I gave up and went home, after asking the odds of getting called in/off tomorrow.

Yes, you read that right.  They called me in.

Then they called me back off again.

 

I call shenanigans.