A bad day...

When I was three, either Julia or I (I can't remember which now) wrote a story entitled A Bad Day. This little tale regaled such childish tragedies as "I couldn't figure out which shirt (spelled shit) to wear" and "I spilled my milk." So, maybe it wasn't War and Peace, but my mother was impressed enough to send the entire little narrative to my Dad (deployed with the USS Manley) who framed it and hung it in his home office.

I wonder now how that little three year old girl would describe the last 48 hours.

It all started Wednesday night when I returned from the gym to find that my computer had gone on strike. I've been working around the clock lately on two projects, and because I seem to get so much more done at the house, the fact that the Operating System had completely removed itself from the machine was quite a tragedy. After an hour of trying to fix it myself, I took it down to CompUSA for a little flirting and attempting to get it back within a reasonable amount of time. I was promised that it'd be back by COB Thursday. I was happy.

Thursday morning, I woke up late and rushed to the office, where I found that one of my processes had blown up overnight and my boss expected me to come up with a new process because we had 433 orphan records in the system (for those not familiar with databases, this is a BAD thing, go with it). Rhea emailed me to see if I could pick up a focus group ($100, yay!) and since nothing was going well, I went for it.

On the way back from the focus group, I almost got into a bar fight in CompUSA...

I walked in, and the only person I saw was another customer. This short, squat man with glasses, a bad shirt, and a terrible haircut was standing in front of me.

"Hello," I said (I always talk to strangers, it's part of my charm).

"How ya doing, Red; even though I know that's not your real hair color," the other customer (TOC hereafter) said.

Now, you all know that in the winter months, I will occasionally dye my hair to get it closer to my summer red color. It's a personal choice, and it looks natural, and I like it! Even so, I'm not sure what this jerk was doing pointing it out.

"Well, actually, sir," I replied, "red is a natural color for me. Though, I'll admit, that this is dyed. Even so, I thank you for your incredible rudeness."

You'd think that this would inspire the man to shut the hell up. At least it would for any normal person. Unfortunately, he wasn't normal. He kept going...

"Yeah, my family's been in the barber business for 30 years. I can see your roots. It's a bad dye job."

Ok, firstly it isn't. But, yes, he really said this, and, yes, I really replied, "Thirty years, huh? Which one of them hates you enough to do that to your head?"

That's when he went off. Nothing was safe. Not only did I posses a bad dye job, but I was overweight (he said fat), could wear make up, and possessed several other unattractive qualities.

The guy from CompUSA FINALLY made his first appearance and first he helped TOC. Then, he went into the back, and another guy came out immediately to assist me. I swear, there must have been some sort of conference, because I've never seen an IT guy move so fast (and I'm in the biz). He asked for my phone number, but understood when I smiled and replied, "I'm sorry, but I really don't feel comfortable giving you my phone number in front of this gentleman here."

That's when I was called a "Psychotic, frigid, fucking bitch." I'm not sure how one can be frigid and fucking, and I also took offense to the psychotic part. Because, really, I'm not. I'm quite adorable and anyone who knows me can feel free to leave comments attesting to the fact that I'm quite fabulous.

But I digress...I slammed my hand down on the counter, turned to the guy and said, "Excuse me, sir, but could you *be* any more of an ASSHOLE? I mean, I know you're compensating for something, but I can't possibly believe it could be THAT small." Accompanied by a little pinky wave.

TOC said, "Yep, you want me to try??" And kept going.

That's when Customer Service guy took me to the back and IMMEDIATELY started apologizing. He said that TOC had been in five times that morning and had picked fights with five different customers. I, however, had been the only one to come back with anything good. Another Customer Service rep, then went, "Is that the asshole with the hard drive? I should have corrupted that thing when I had it back here!"

So, you'd think that the story would be over there, right? I'd have collected my computer and gone home and continued my work, but no. The computer wasn't ready then, and despite all the promises made, it wasn't ready until 11:30 AM this morning. In that time, I had come home to find that Winter had once again peed on my bed and the pipe to my washing machine had broken again. I couldn't work, so I called a friend and the evening ended well (thank God), but I'm still afraid of possible fallout from that as it were.

Here's hoping there's none. :)