100 Reasons To Hate The Daygig: #35

Ever show up late for work? Sure, everyone has at least once. Some people seem to do it habitually. I've known a few people that would treat their latenesses like a character trait, something that was their "thing."

I lost a job due to latenesses once. It wasn't a great job, I'd started out temping in an office mailroom and within a week the office manager told me he wanted to hire me outright, which was cool, and in a little less than a year I was promoted to a clerical position where if I wasn't sitting at my desk when my supervisor walked in at 8 sharp, I was marked late. I could be in the can, I could be talking to the office manager...Hell, once I was waiting at my supervisor's desk waiting for her and she walked in, regarded me with a minute shrug without recognition, looked at my empty seat, picked up her tardiness pad from her desk and started to write me up as I looked over her shoulder. My supervisor was a sweet lady, a good mother to her kids and when holidays rolled around, she would shuffle over to your desk and wish you the warmest with utmost sincerity, but she couldn't get her eyes connected to her brain and I found out too late.

I should tell you at this point that there were days when I was genuinely and stupidly late. I had it made when I started the job, I had a rickety Turismo that I'd blast Elfman's Batman theme out of as I flew down the Long Island Expressway, but the Turismo flat out quit one day without notice and left me to take two subway trains and a bus to work. The bus, the last leg of the commute, a four-mile stretch through Queens, was always late and on even a few occasions nonexistent, so notoriously so that gypsy cabs were plentiful and only charged the usual busfare to jet you up the stretch with four or five fellow passengers jammed in the back with you. Sometimes, even these madmen weren't fast enough and I'd walk in late, the rest of the 80 desk warriors in the huge main office watching me walk in, thinking of how they could get there on time, why the hell couldn't I? Two minutes, four minutes, didn't matter, it might as well have been fifteen minutes, it was the same difference. The next day I'd leave home a half-hour earlier and get to work forty-five minutes early, an hour early. Consistency was impossible without the car, believe me, I tried. I have no idea how many latenesses were genuine and how many were due to my supervisor's mental state, but I think in retrospect I got a fair shake either way.

One day the office manager told me my next lateness would result in dismissal. Four months later I was two minutes late. I'd like to say I was rescuing a sack full of kittens from drowning, but it was just a routine lateness, fifteen minutes sitting in a stopped subway car waiting for movement and praying for a swift death. I was at my desk for a total of thirty seconds when my phone rang. Ten minutes later I was out, and it would have been quicker if I didn't have to ride the elevator down to see the shop steward and then ride back up to my floor to grab my jacket. It was a union job, I'd been told what to expect, I was so comfortable with the decision that I went to the office manager's door and thanked him for the opportunity and told him I regretted failing the job. Had there been a shrine and a sword, I'd be typing this in samurai heaven.

This led me to improve my punctuality, you can guess, and although it was a hard uphill slough, I think I've improved greatly. If I'm late today, it's due to my tenacity and task-oriented tunnel-vision. I'll be pounding away at some task at home, leisure or not, and realize I've got minus-ten minutes to get ready to go to work. It's rare, and since I plan an hour-early departure for what's usually a thirty-minute trip, I'm covered. I can still lay an egg once in a while, like the time I showed up to a job interview 45 minutes late on my first trip way downtown (the receptionist's eyeroll when I asked if there was a chance I could still be seen looked painful) or my second date with the sweet, sweet woman I eventually married when I pulled up two hours late by not following her directions to her place, but for the most part I'm pretty responsible.

Why is this relevant, Tom?

Right now as I type this line, it's 1:15 am. I'm at work, a job that normally lasts until 10 pm if I'm on the closing shift. I'm here late since the corporate office finally approved an after-hours paint job for some of the high-traffic areas of my workplace. Someone's got to be here with the crew, there's a lot of valuable inventory, and out of six fellow managers, I drew the short stick again, or at least I assume I did since I was simply told I would be here closing tonight when these guys were approved for last week.

The contractor called yesterday to confirm with me that they'd be here at 8 pm to get started and they'd need about seven hours to get it done.

They got here at 11 pm.

Any of you out there have a job where you can show up three hours late without fear of reprisal? I sure as hell don't, and can't imagine that even if I land myself in a career as a writer that there would ever be a situation where I could show up three hours late and shrug at those expecting me and say, "Hey, I got hung up." This is like a Sharon Stone move, showing up that late and acting like it's three minutes instead of three hours, and I'm pretty sure these guys won't be mistaken for her any time soon. The contractor had called this afternoon to say they'd be here at nine, we're very sorry, but when they weren't here at ten without any word, I started calling them myself. I finally got someone at 10:30 who said the crew was ten minutes away.

I'll be here until at least 6 am. The Prince will be waking up between six and seven, and shortly thereafter my wife will leave for her infinitely-better-than-mine job and I will watch The Prince until the sitter arrives at ten-thirty, at which point I usually will get ready for work, perform some chore or probably just veg for ninety minutes until it's time to leave.

These freaking guys are trying to buddy up to me now, and I'm such a sap that I'm joking along with them instead of asking them these questions I'm asking myself and you right now. That's how professional I am at this point in my life, I can't even bring myself to lash out when it's warranted.

I think in the end I'm just mad at myself, leading my career only so far in my life to where I'm sitting at work at 1:30 in the morning waiting on a couple of easy-going guys who after all is said and done are undoubtedly making more money painting walls than I am in a position of authority watching them.

Push, push, push.