Lord it's hard to be humble
Nov. 13th, 2007 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgActually, no, today, quite easy.
Had to nip out to the post office this morning to deposit my pay cheque (you heard me - cutting edge software companies seem to have the most old fashioned systems) and asked the office manager if I could do anything for her while I was out. She said I could pick up the mail, and duely handed me the keys to the two post office boxes.
I have worked at this place on and off for a bit over three years and have somehow managed to avoid this particular little task, but I'd walked past the post boxes hundreds of times and felt confident in my ability to retrieve the correspondence. I'm sure I mentioned it was my first time when she handed over the keys.
Cut to me, standing helplessly in front of a bank of post boxes on Hay Street, doing my best impression of a pedestrian traffic calming device on the busy footpath, staring back and forth between the half dozen scribbled numbers on the keyring and the bizarrely numbered options. Couldn't match a one. After a while I got dizzy (and started to wonder if I looked like a mad person or a security risk) so went in, did my banking and returned to the office ashamed at my sudden dyslexia.
OK, if it had been really important I would have asked for help inside, but since aforementioned office manager would be going out for coffee later anyway I knew she could do the mail run herself. Non-critical failure. Best use of resources = retreat.
See, that's how I live with myself: pure cold logic.
On my return to the office I confessed my failure and was told that there were more boxes "out the back", reached by going down a nearby arcade, past the coffee shop, through a courtyard...
The office manager had assumed that I knew. I assumed that I knew. From such stuff the chaos of Life is built.
I still felt like an idiot. Remind yourselves to steer clear of me after the apocalypse. I suspect I'd be a liability to the team.
Had to nip out to the post office this morning to deposit my pay cheque (you heard me - cutting edge software companies seem to have the most old fashioned systems) and asked the office manager if I could do anything for her while I was out. She said I could pick up the mail, and duely handed me the keys to the two post office boxes.
I have worked at this place on and off for a bit over three years and have somehow managed to avoid this particular little task, but I'd walked past the post boxes hundreds of times and felt confident in my ability to retrieve the correspondence. I'm sure I mentioned it was my first time when she handed over the keys.
Cut to me, standing helplessly in front of a bank of post boxes on Hay Street, doing my best impression of a pedestrian traffic calming device on the busy footpath, staring back and forth between the half dozen scribbled numbers on the keyring and the bizarrely numbered options. Couldn't match a one. After a while I got dizzy (and started to wonder if I looked like a mad person or a security risk) so went in, did my banking and returned to the office ashamed at my sudden dyslexia.
OK, if it had been really important I would have asked for help inside, but since aforementioned office manager would be going out for coffee later anyway I knew she could do the mail run herself. Non-critical failure. Best use of resources = retreat.
See, that's how I live with myself: pure cold logic.
On my return to the office I confessed my failure and was told that there were more boxes "out the back", reached by going down a nearby arcade, past the coffee shop, through a courtyard...
The office manager had assumed that I knew. I assumed that I knew. From such stuff the chaos of Life is built.
I still felt like an idiot. Remind yourselves to steer clear of me after the apocalypse. I suspect I'd be a liability to the team.
