I hate mondays!
Why is it that Mondays on average just turns out about 150% worse than every other weekday? I’ll tell you about my Monday:
Well, actually it started on Sunday evening (guess, it’s something with the time-differences and so - or this particular Monday just decided to start early…). I was getting excited about two things - going to a job-interview and getting degus (small rodent) as new pets. I decided to see if I could be better prepared for the interview and searched for the company on the net. All went well, untill I tried to figure out how to get there… went to the bus-company’s homepage… I don’t think I’ve ever been more dissappointed…
I live in a city with around 110-120 thousand inhabitants… how hard would you think it would be for public transportation to be at least worthwhile? In this case, nearly impossible it seems - I needed to go from the southern residential district to a street near the harbour and also near one of the gymnasial education centres - in other words - a relatively well-traveled route… walking there would take around 45-60 minutes at a brisk walk - we are talking maybe 7-8 km.
Okay, I needed to be there at 10 AM - and this homepage (link) had a service that allowed me to enter city streets and time of arrival - so far so good… but the results… I tell you… they were amazing… there were 4 options - none of them taking less than 45 minutes… First one adviced me to take one bus for approx. 1 minute … then walk the rest of the way, second advised me to use 3 (!) different bus-lines going all over the city taking 57 minutes and getting me there 20 minutes before 10.
Okay, taking a deep breath before reading the last two - I find the third one sending me in the wrong direction out of town - taking a regional bus-rute back into town - then shift to another bus to the final destination - two stops, with busses being within 1-2 minutes of each other… the odds of actually making that is slim-to-none with the standard here, not to mention that it would take 50 minutes… so, turning to my last hope… Take bus into centre of town and then walk the rest of the way - of course using one of the ’scenic’ service routes taking approx. 53 minutes…
Of course, to add insult to injury - most of their homepage doesn’t work in Firefox and is buggy in Explorer needing a special java-plugin and toting an incomprehensible user’s manual… I proceeded to take a look at a map… if I took the commuter bus to the centre of town - and walked the rest of the way… it would take approx. 30 minutes…
Okay - back to Monday (or rather fast-forward) - I get up at 8 intending to have enough time to be relaxed turning up… of course, my favorite shirt has been lost somewhere moving my fianc?e - so, I had to iron my second-choice one i.e. the super-wrinkled one… okay, minor set-back. Everything goes smoothly taking the bus into town. I take an early one anticipating delays… no delays, so I end up in the middle of town with about 20 minutes to kill (nothing is worse than showing up too early at an interview). So, I walk around a bit in town looking at the town waking up. Really nice - I’m relaxed and feeling real good about myself.
So, decide to walk the last bit… I then proceed to take a wrong turn ending up near the express-way… okay, not entirely sure, where I took the wrong turn, so I call one of my friends - turns out that I need to proceed a bit further, then double back down another road - I’ve succesfully just about doubled the walking distance… hooray for that. So, I decide to call the company explaining that I would be about 10-15 minutes late… the person, I’m to meet isn’t available, but the guy promises to pass on the message.
Finally arriving at the company, I meet the guy I talked with on the telephone with a cup of coffee in his hand - he then goes: “Uhm… aren’t you aware that the interview is first this coming Monday?” I decided to avoid too many curses at this point, as I was more confused than actually annoyed at this point. Okay, it turns out that the person in charge of hiring is in Aarhus today, so nothing to do, but head back home and wait a week. The guy was really nice offering me a cup of coffee as a sort of “You’re having the worst Monday ever…”-prize.
Okay, so exiting the company again - I was sure that e-mail had said “How does Monday 10 AM suit you?”… so, I was getting annoyed that they had left out the date - receiving the e-mail Friday, I was sure that it was today. Well, no use crying over spilt milk - I head home to re-read the mail… of course, it did say September 5th… which obviously isn’t today…
Oh, did I mention that taking that.. uhm… shortcut left me sweating like a pig, because naturally today, the weather decided to take a turn for the better after three days of chilling cold…