The Monday to beat all Mondays
Published 12:00 am Monday, December 29, 2003
Monday was one of those days when even hearing the sound of my name just made me cringe.
It was "Monday" all around. You know, the kind of Monday you only hear about in horror stories and really bad metaphors.
To begin with, our brand new printer at the office died. A printer we'd just spent a couple of hundred dollars on to speed up the operations in the office.
It misfed about three sheets of paper - all at once - and caused the mother of all paper jams.
I spent a good portion of my day trying to get the paper out, but it was fruitless. I'm talking about a paper jam even the professionals could fix. It's so bad, the printer company is having to send us a brand new printer.
From there, the day just deteriorated.
Our pagniator for classified pages is out of work because of a tonsillectomy, leaving the classified department to build pages by themselves, with me serving as their technical support and "go to" guy.
Luckily for me, the printer I was working on is next to the classified computer Š at least I didn't have to go far.
And then, all the incoming telephone calls from surveyors, business calls, and just about everyone else one could think of.
I literally wanted to just run and hide. I even told them I "died."
It didn't work. This one surveyor with a British accent kept calling until I finally agreed to take his survey.
When I told him we use Macintosh computers, he finally got the picture and quit calling.
And then, there was the whole fast-breaking news that all happened within 30 minutes of each other.
It all began with a wreck in Opp, continued with a fire at a public housing complex, and turned into an alleged drive-by shooting incident.
Fortunately, I've a very dedicated staff, and one person in particular who was on the go last night. That made things a little easier to bear, but it didn't really make up for the day I had already had.
I understand that a certain part of my job involves all the headaches and quirks that crop up from time to time, but please, God, don't let it happen on a Monday again!
A lot of the folks at work said it was all because of the full moon.
I do remember the last full moon had a lot of odd occurrences (like the other type of "full moon" that was spotted on the Square)Š I just didn't have a bad day to go along with it.
I'm not sure if I can say it was all Monday though. Over the past week, we've had a month's worth of news happen in a few short days. Heck, Monday night was practically a week's worth of news in one 30 minute time span.
But, I've decided what I'm gonna do next time my day gets so bad and I can't stand the sound of my own name.
I'm changing my name to Bob, so everyone else can be annoyed (just like in Office Space).