So the fun task of the day was running from my job on my lunch hour to the temp agency to pick up my check, running over from the temp agency to my bank to deposit my check, and then running back to the train to get to work again, all before 1:30 PM.
Lemmie give you these figures. From my job to my temp agency is, let's say, a fifteen minute ride. There and back equals half my lunch. My bank is five blocks from the temp agency. So all in all I should've had at least fifteen minutes extra after running for my life down Madison avenue.
Instead, I was fifteen minutes late.
The reason for that is nothing at all happened in time or on schedule. I run like mad to the train, wait ten minutes for it to finally come, then ride it patiently to the agency, where I find an old man holding the box of checks.
"Hi, I'm here to pick up my check."
He looks like he's sleeping. "Uh, and I'm on my lunch break, so I need it really quickly."
He grumbles, opens the box, starts thumbing through. "My name is–"
"Grumble grumble I don't need it, I know you." No you don't, I've never seen you before in my life.
He hands me a check. Nancy Welch. "Um, this isn't me."
"Sure it is!"
"No." I hand it back. "That's a girl. I'm a boy."
"Oh, right." He starts thumbing through again. I don't have time for this. I give him my name, he looks up at me, glares, and starts searching again.
And then someone brings a baby into the room.
Apparently, this was a fact I've never known, but to old people babies are the kryptonite that renders their check-finding skills utterly inadequate. He cooes at the baby, goo-goos it, oggles it, does not find my check. Now it's five past 1 and I'm cutting it close.
"Excuse me, lunch break, need to be paid."
The man snarls at me, tears himself away from the non-tax-paying child with a grunt, thumbs through the box, and thrusts my check at me with venom. "Have a nice day, young man."
I don't respond.
Down the elevator which takes forever, out the door which is filled with people coming in, and over to the bank, which has a line wrapping around the lobby. I want to cry, the money would be deposited faster if I do it through a teller but I have no time, so I run over to the ATM. And the card reader refuses to read my card. Annoyed! ANNOYED!
Back around to the other side of the bank, where another ATM is, which blessedly reads my card and accepts my deposit. Then I'm back out, flying west on 45th st, and then stuck in the thick of Lunch Hour in Times Square, Manhattan.
Posted on every block from 45th and 7th to 42nd and 7th, where the train I need to catch is, are Scientology booths with big red displays of "STRESS TEST!" and a gigantic, winking yellow smiley face. People stand in the middle of the sidewalk disorienting the already fragile-ly structured walking pedestraians. Handing out fliers. I pass one, he throws a piece of paper at me, screams, "Stress test?!?" and sounding both inquisitive, as if he cares about the state of my stress levels, and obnoxious at all once.
"No thanks," I say as I fly past. Then another.
"STRESS TEST?!"
"No thanks…."
Then another. "STRESS TEST?!!?" "NO THANKS."
And then another, standing in my way, not moving. "STRESS TEST!??!!??!"
"I'm fucking stressed, I don't need a test!" I shove him out of the way, run down the staircase, into the station, where I see my train depart. 1:20.
By the time I get back down to the area where I work it's 1:37, then I have to walk three blocks and an avenue, I still hadn't eaten, and I want to kill the small child who's dancing around me.
Why is everybody so slow in New York? Fuck!
So I get in, sit back down at my desk, and snarl. Then I get up again and go to the vending machine to buy a Snickers, and enjoy my exciting lunch.
I wonder if starting a smoking habit would help.
28 October 2004 at 6:16 pm | 2 Comments »
bitching, the daily things
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