A couple of spanners in the works are harshing my vibe right now. I certainly didn't intend for this to happen, but they happened, and I have to deal with it. And in both cases, the breakdowns in communication made bad situations worse.
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I'll talk about the more benign situation, which happened today here, at Caribou. I usually get a fancy mocha -- you know, a turtle mocha or one with caramel -- along with a cookie. Recently, I turned down the fanciness and asked for just a plain mocha. It saves me 40 cents, and I am on the dole. Today, they ran out of cookies, so to make up for that, I asked for a fancier turtle mocha. But the barista, someone who has been my barista for years (it could be more than a decade, in fact) made me a plain old mocha.
So what to do? I paid for a fancier mocha than I got. Actually, another day I would just take it. But not this day. At first my barista said she was just going to dump the mocha. But it was a perfectly good mocha, and it would be a waste to just pour it down the drain. I asked if I could just get the difference in change back. The barista said she couldn't do that. Then she said she could just make another one while giving me the boring mocha. But I didn't want both because that's way too much. So she just took and poured out the first mocha she made for me to give me the one I ordered.
She said she should have looked at the screen to see that I switched up my order, and yes, I guess she should have. But I did switch things up on her, too. Whatever the rate, I feel really bad for kind of jerking her around, as well for ruining a perfectly good mocha. And as I write this now, my stomach isn't so full that, possibly, I could have drank a second mocha.
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The more important fuck-up is the experiment which stands in as my source of income right now. I realized too late that the study I had begun in earnest requires 14 consecutive visits to their office (something, by the way, I thought was not pointed out to me on the flier I clipped the phone number from, but now that I have seen the in the office ... well, maybe I didn't read it all the way through). I called to make sure if I was still eligible, and the coordinator apparently said that, even though I would be out of some money, I could go on.
Yesterday, before I left for the day, I reminded them that I'll be gone the first part of next week and that I'll see them Thursday. The coordinator basically said, "What?" and went on to say that since I'll be missing too many dates, all of the data I was giving them would be unusable. Man, I thought I had already cleared that with her.
So I compromised. I told her that I would be coming back in the afternoon, and she took advantage of that. I will have to miss two days, apparently the maximum allowed for this research study. But to make sure all of the data doesn't go to waste, I am to immediately disembark from the airplane when I touch down at MSP and get my butt to downtown Minneapolis to take in a session. That means that the plans I was entertaining of getting my car back from the repair shop on Wednesday is now shot (I haven't talked about that part, but it's the car that's robbing me of money). I don't think I'll tell my parents to pick me up from downtown Minneapolis because that opens up a whole can of worms I can't deal with, so after I get done with this session (which might be as long as 90 minutes) I'll probably go back down to the airport so they can pick me up there. I'll just have to lie to them about when the plane arrives.
You know, I told her this over the phone, and I thought I told her I'd be missing three days. But if I had just looked at this flier and remembered that I will be out of town these next several days, maybe I would have either jumped on this so I would've started sooner so I would have been done with this before taking my vacation, or maybe I would delayed this until I came back from vacation. (Of course, if I delayed it, I would have a full month of going through the charade of working in the morning. Also, I might have found a job and therefore I might not have done this experiment at all.) So now people are changing things around just for me, and that makes me very uncomfortable and sad. Just so I can get $360 plus parking reimbursement. Yay.
Oh, one other thing. She automatically set up an appointment for 3:30. I thought that would give me plenty of time to get from the airport. But then I looked at my itinerary. I actually get back into town at 3:50. (I should look at things a little closer next time.) Should I tell her that we need to push our time back? No; she might end my involvement with the study entirely. I'll tell her the day of that "something came up" and I'll be there closer to 4:30. She did say that if my flight was delayed she could stick around -- "within reason." I hope an extra hour, for something that "happened" the day of, will be reasonable enough.
This is just so bad.
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