Morning Demons

It's the weekend!! Sun is shining.  Six Nations rugby is on, and excitement hangs in the crisp, chilly air all throughout Wales.  It's time to crack out the Welsh cakes and have a shandy or six!

And I'm in work.

Don't worry, I'm on my lunch break.  So no need to tell on me, slacker Nazis! *glare*

Surprisingly, I don't feel too gloomy about having to be in an office while everyone else out there in The Big Wide World is having fun and readying themselves for a day at the pub.  I have one of the more relentlessly chipper members of staff working with me today, so it's hard to keep the frown smeared on my chops.

Wasn't feeling quite so tolerant this morning though.  I am categorically, 100% NOT a morning person.  Morning me can only stand 3 things in the wee hours of the day.  These are:

* Coffee
* Hugging
* The snooze button

If whatever is being offered to me isn't one of the above, I am not interested, thanksverymuch.  While Morning Me tries to be fair and hate everything equally, there are a few things that make her feel more murder-y than others.  Inexplicably, these are things that don't generally even register on Daytime Me's radar, let alone bug her.  But to Morning Me, the below are things that I'm convinced exist solely to crawl under my skin to make my brain go into short fits of blind rage expressed as  "fuckingbastardsmphmphmorningfuckertwatmphmumblemumble" because I'm too foggy-brained to vent my overblown anger better:


- Waking up even a nanosecond before the alarm goes off.
-  That strangled crunching noise my car makes when I try to clonk it into third gear. "SQUEEECRUNCHEEEEKTHUD!"
- Morning People. Those freaks of the dawn hours who bounce out of bed, fully suited and booted with stupid grins on their stupid faces.
- Rifling through the floor-drobe (wardrobe alternative to the young and hip like myself) for clothing that doesn't smell and isn't creased, hating myself with a passion for not hanging shit up like grown-ups are supposed to.
- Battling the straw nest situation atop my head with heated tongs only for it to form into devil horns the second I leave the house.

I'm aware of how petty these things are, but in the morning, before I give myself a chance to come around, they are world-ending, red-eye-turning, possessed-scream inducing banes of my life.  For this reason, I would like to call upon other sufferers of morning demonic-ness to band together as one in spreading word of our plight.  Awareness must be raised, and I feel that it would be charitable of the Morning People I hate and envy so much to form a morning army of sorts.  If this were to become a working idea, it would be the morning army's responsibility to:

- Wake us up gently with coffee and hugs, but not, I repeat NOT before the alarm goes off.
- Drive our semi-lifeless bodies with quiet patience to work, in cars that don't make crunchy noises.
- Continue not to talk to us unless absolutely necessary until it is at least 10am and the light has turned back on in our eyes and we can function as humans again.

Not too much to ask, is it?  In return, us Non-morning People will gift you with snacks and beverages in thanks throughout the day, and promise not to bug you too much when our energy levels explode just as you're winding down at the end of the day.  The world as a whole, I truly believe, will be a much happier place.

Pant Soiling, Many Fucks and a BUGGERFUCK (aka A Day At The Office)

Welp.  I very nearly had a mental breakdown this morning.  Admin manager texted me at 7.30am to see if I'd picked up office keys as I was rota'd to do. The other girl, we'll call her S, also rota'd to collect some had forgotten hers. S and I had something in common.

"Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!!" Cue much flapping and blind panic.  I'd inadvertently helped lock the entire early shift out of work.  Now, an understandably pee'd off admin manager was en route to let us in, even though she wasn't due to be in til later, and lived too far away to let us in for 8a.m, our opening time.  In her shoes, I'd be wanting blood.  Pasty, caffeinated office drone blood.

Flapping and swearing kills a surprising amount of time. So, now, fifteen minutes before I'm meant to be at an unlocked and buzzing (busy,not smelly) office, I'm still in my living room, twenty minutes' drive away, doing my best impression of an alarmed chicken.

So, i grabbed my bag, bellowed an "Agh, fuck!!" at A, in lieu of a goodbye, ran out of the door, Bambi skidded my way to the car.  Naturally, car was encased in a solid block of ice.  Wobbled back to house, grabbed kettle, splashed warm water on car, car cube melted, back to house, deposited kettle, back to car.

Car is cube again.

"BUGGERFUCK!!!"

Mad dash around car, spraying messy patches of de-icer on windows. Peeping through the patches, I race down the road, probably mowing down cats and schoolchildren I can't see.  I run a red light, and nearly kill myself skidding on some ice at a busy roundabout. 

But I make it to work on time. Ish.  One measly minute late. Admin manager hasn't arrived yet anyway, but S is there to greet me, also soiling herself over the bollocking to come.  Now, S, funny and chatty as she is, isn't exactly the office optimist.  She believes that things happen for a reason (reason being to make us suffer horrily), and by the time the admin manager turns up, our preicted punishment has escalated from stern words to immediate firing and possible death by stoning.

Admin M turns up and let us in, being too polite to eff and blind at us.  Instead, she takes the British route of talking very little and looking knackered enough to make us feel awful for dragging her from her slumber.  Fair one.  

We start work half an hour late, S and I waiting with trepidation, pooing our knickers in readiness for the Big M's (in hindsight, Big M not the best choice of label for the main office manager. Makes him sound like our pimp... Oh, well, I've used it now) arrival, which we've been informed will be at about midday. 

He's going to murder us, I think.  He's going to murder us dead.  

Stressed, I start to work with my head bowed apologetically, despite my co workers being sweetly breezy about having been made to stand out in the cold, unpaid for half an hour while the sun wasn't even properly up yet.

I am a hopeless people pleaser, and I hate hate hate being told off, especially when I know I'm at fault.  The worst thing someone can do to me is make me feel like I've let them down in some way.  I dread my bollocking, and feel like a five year old about to be told off in front of the entire school.  Exaggerating? I wish.

So, I work. And I work, and I work, and I work some more.  I'm like a machine, getting a whole day's worth of stuff done in a single morning, just to avoid dwelling and building up a humdrum chain of events into something of cataclysmic proportions. Holy shit, I think, I didn't know I had it in me to get this much done!

Big M rocks up.  I avoid eye contact for as long as humanly possible.  But it has to happen eventually.  And here it is...

"So."  He places his palms on his desk, forcing us to look down the row of computers and acknowledge his presence. "Girls.  You both managed to forget to take keys home last night..."

"Forgottolook mumblemumblemumble..."

"Sorry mumblemumblemumble wonthappenagainmyfault..."

"Okay. So, who's doing what today?"

What. 

That was IT?  After all that stress, all the palpitations and clammy fear, we don't even get a patronising finger waggle?  A clip round the head? Five Hail Marys? I feel numb.  Even a little cheated.  I'd invested a whole morning of sweaty panic over "okay"?!!  Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!

So.  What I've learned today:

1. Things are never as bad as you imagine they'll be.

2. Terror is an excellent motivator. I mean, it just gets shit done!

3. I might have a slight...just slight...tendency to overreact to trivial things.  Slight.

Just about to finish this entry, but I've had a text off S, which I feel I have to share with you guys. I'm sure she won't mind:

"You still in work?  I can't find my house keys xxx"

Lolz.