Today I screwed everything up. EVERY. Thing. Well, almost anyway. It sure felt like it for a good long while. But those that know me well enough, know that when when I screw things up, I do so in a big way, and today was no exception.
First, the very long weekend caught up to me as I feared. So I overslept this morning and the kids were late for school, which I hate. Definitely not one of my best days as a parent.
Then I blew lunch, which became a 3.5 hour fiasco. FEE-ASS-CO. And I have absolutely no one else to blame but my self.
A former employee that moved to England came back to town for the holiday. And as has become traditional upon her semi-regular visits to the states, we arranged a lunch with her and the old team to catch-up and, in this case, put on a bit of a baby shower as she has been blessed with expected motherhood.
We were all supposed to meet at a specific place on the opposite side of town from our work location at 11:30, but because of a reservation issue, I changed it last minute to 11:00, which created much confusion all on its own (in particular because we could not contact our former employee via her international cell phone number). But once we were all settled in, we waited until 11:50 without our former team member showing up before we learned that she and her English husband were at a completely different restaurant entirely. But we had our food at this point (as did they), so we had to finish eating before we could even begin to rectify anything.
We only even learned where she was by extrapolation. She left a voicemail for us at work, and the phone number she called from was one digit off from that of a restaurant we had met at previously, so we called that restaurant and gave a description. Sure enough she was there, eating without us.
So how did this happen?
Turns out I, and I alone, TOTALLY botched the communication during the planning stage and so we ended up in different places. The email among the players got fragmented where I was having two different conversations, one with her, and one with the team. With the team, we set a place, and a day... Monday. But that didn't work for one person, so we switched to Thursday. But then Thursday didn't work for our former team member, so we changed back to Monday. But, all the while, I did NOT share the chosen location with our visitor. When I let her know that we settled on Monday, she asked same place and time? And I said YES.
But you see, she was wasn't in on the rest of the conversation. Her "same place and time" meant SAME AS HER LAST VISIT IN JULY!!! Whereas my "same place and time" meant the same on Monday as we had been originally planning on Thursday.
Ugh.
So after my entire team got done eating (we didn't even order or anything until like 11:30), we had to travel 25+ minutes back to the other restaurant -- on the other side of town, as in closer to the office (oh, and it started raining while we were eating) -- so we could spend the requisite time with our former team member, as to not waste her time, AND, so we could present her with baby shower gifts from the team. Of course, it didn't help one bit that on the way from one place to the other, I almost got my most crucial employee killed by pulling out into an intersection that WASN'T a four-way stop, which caused me to skid upon slamming the breaks on newly wet ground, nearly being hit by an oncoming car. G-E-E-Z, Shawn... WTF!
In the end, we did get to spend a good deal of time with our former team mate, though not over a meal. We gave gifts, looked at pictures, and watched ultrasound video. BUT, my entire team was non-productive (i.e. OFF THE CLOCK) for more than three hours, which does no good for our deadlines. Um, I mean, MY deadlines (seeing as how I set them).
So, we're all in agreement, right? I screwed up big-time? I dare you to argue to the contrary.
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