Every summer I place a large order for employee gifts for our company picnic. The gifts vary year-by-year in terms of use, size, and weight, but, without fail, 550(ish) somethings arrive at our corporate office every July.
This year the gift was golf umbrellas (quality, hefty umbrellas with never-turn-inside-out-technology).
They were very nice umbrellas.
They were also pretty big, and fairly heavy (for umbrellas) umbrellas.
They also came in oddly-shaped boxes of 25 umbrellas.
Oh, and the day they arrived was particularly hot and humid.
I can’t tell you anything about the gift deliveries in past years.
I can’t remember how many boxes the backpacks were shipped in.
I don’t know the weight of the boxes of portable phone chargers.
I couldn’t possibly tell you the heat index on the day the beach towels arrived.
So why was the 2016 delivery of golf umbrellas so memorable?
Well, I'll tell you - this particular delivery was memorable because when I walked up front to make sure all of the boxes were there, the Fed Ex delivery person looked at me with complete annoyance and said,
“Delivering these boxes has been the worst 40 minutes of my life.”
It made an impression.
Of course, instead of accepting the fact that Mr. Fed Ex was simply having a bad day, I took the whole thing very personally and stewed about it for the next few months (as is my nature).
The first day, I felt really bad for being the responsible party and for making somebody deliver heavy boxes in hot weather.
Then I got tired of feeling bad (yeah, it only took a day) and have spent the remaining 5 months turning the situation around to make Mr. Fed Ex the bad guy and reassuring myself with thoughts like:
Seriously?
The WORST 40 minutes of his entire life?
What a ridiculous thing to say!
With everything going on in the world, all of the people suffering, he has the nerve to claim that carrying boxes into a building is the worst 40 minutes of his life?
What a drama queen!
Then, last week I found myself complaining to a friend about standing in an exceptionally long line at CVS (in which people kept cutting the REAL line by walking directly to the self-serve kiosks instead of standing in the REAL line like you are supposed to…a topic which could/should be its own blog) and actually heard myself begin to utter the phrase, “It was the worst 15 minutes of my….”
and the words “drama" and "queen” danced across my mind in pink glittery bubble letters.
So, realizing my own hypocritical ridiculousness, I decided to pay closer attention to how I reacted to various situations throughout the week and how many times I may have over-exaggerate a little,
or more than a little,
or approaching the drama queen status that I seem so quickly and easily willing to bestow upon others.
Here you go:
I was swimming laps at the local school. There was one other person in my lane, so we each got a side of the lane, which is awesome.
But then, with 1000 yards remaining in my workout, a third person joined our lane, and we had to switch to circle swimming, which meant that I couldn't swim at the specific pace I wanted to swim.
WORST 15 minutes of my swimming career.
…except for the 1995 WRC Tournament when a certain swimmer from Seeger High School zipped past me with 25 yards remaining to win the 200 yard freestyle by a touch and destroy every last one of my hopes and dreams (for more details: http://faithkor.blogspot.com/2009/03/race.html).
I ordered a medium iced coffee with caramel flavoring and cream (I don’t get additional sugar because I am an extremely healthy person :)) from Dunkin Donuts and they gave me SUGAR FREE CARAMEL!!!
WORST Dunkin Donuts iced coffee of my life.
I had to carry our weekly groceries from the parking garage up to our 8th floor apartment.
It took two trips and both were SOOO heavy (several canned items, a gallon of milk, two boxes of soda) AND the elevator stopped at every single floor both times!
WORST grocery carrying experience of my life.
This genuinely made me crabby. There are starving people in the world, and having SO MANY bags of food that I had to make two trips (in an elevator – I don’t even have to take the stairs) made me crabby.
I’m not proud.
Also, the elevator only actually stopped like 3 times over the course of both trips.
I had to do a 1 hour workout on the elliptical and every single one of my tv channels were showing reruns.
Real Housewives of Orange County, Say Yes to the Dress, Super Soul Sunday, even Law and Order…all episodes I had seen before.
WORST elliptical workout of my life.
I ordered and paid for a giant sugar cookie with my to-go meal from Corner Bakery. When I got home and looked in the bag – no giant sugar cookie!
WORST 2 minutes of my life.
2 minutes being the time I could have been happily eating my giant sugar cookie…you know, if I’d gotten it.
That was one week – just one!
So, in conclusion: I still think that Mr. Fed Ex was being a drama queen…but I'm willing to concede that he’s not the BIGGEST drama queen in the whole world (a certain extremely healthy iced coffee drinker may already hold that title).
This year the gift was golf umbrellas (quality, hefty umbrellas with never-turn-inside-out-technology).
They were very nice umbrellas.
They were also pretty big, and fairly heavy (for umbrellas) umbrellas.
They also came in oddly-shaped boxes of 25 umbrellas.
Oh, and the day they arrived was particularly hot and humid.
I can’t tell you anything about the gift deliveries in past years.
I can’t remember how many boxes the backpacks were shipped in.
I don’t know the weight of the boxes of portable phone chargers.
I couldn’t possibly tell you the heat index on the day the beach towels arrived.
So why was the 2016 delivery of golf umbrellas so memorable?
Well, I'll tell you - this particular delivery was memorable because when I walked up front to make sure all of the boxes were there, the Fed Ex delivery person looked at me with complete annoyance and said,
“Delivering these boxes has been the worst 40 minutes of my life.”
It made an impression.
Of course, instead of accepting the fact that Mr. Fed Ex was simply having a bad day, I took the whole thing very personally and stewed about it for the next few months (as is my nature).
The first day, I felt really bad for being the responsible party and for making somebody deliver heavy boxes in hot weather.
Then I got tired of feeling bad (yeah, it only took a day) and have spent the remaining 5 months turning the situation around to make Mr. Fed Ex the bad guy and reassuring myself with thoughts like:
Seriously?
The WORST 40 minutes of his entire life?
What a ridiculous thing to say!
With everything going on in the world, all of the people suffering, he has the nerve to claim that carrying boxes into a building is the worst 40 minutes of his life?
What a drama queen!
Then, last week I found myself complaining to a friend about standing in an exceptionally long line at CVS (in which people kept cutting the REAL line by walking directly to the self-serve kiosks instead of standing in the REAL line like you are supposed to…a topic which could/should be its own blog) and actually heard myself begin to utter the phrase, “It was the worst 15 minutes of my….”
and the words “drama" and "queen” danced across my mind in pink glittery bubble letters.
So, realizing my own hypocritical ridiculousness, I decided to pay closer attention to how I reacted to various situations throughout the week and how many times I may have over-exaggerate a little,
or more than a little,
or approaching the drama queen status that I seem so quickly and easily willing to bestow upon others.
Here you go:
I was swimming laps at the local school. There was one other person in my lane, so we each got a side of the lane, which is awesome.
But then, with 1000 yards remaining in my workout, a third person joined our lane, and we had to switch to circle swimming, which meant that I couldn't swim at the specific pace I wanted to swim.
WORST 15 minutes of my swimming career.
…except for the 1995 WRC Tournament when a certain swimmer from Seeger High School zipped past me with 25 yards remaining to win the 200 yard freestyle by a touch and destroy every last one of my hopes and dreams (for more details: http://faithkor.blogspot.com/2009/03/race.html).
I ordered a medium iced coffee with caramel flavoring and cream (I don’t get additional sugar because I am an extremely healthy person :)) from Dunkin Donuts and they gave me SUGAR FREE CARAMEL!!!
WORST Dunkin Donuts iced coffee of my life.
I had to carry our weekly groceries from the parking garage up to our 8th floor apartment.
It took two trips and both were SOOO heavy (several canned items, a gallon of milk, two boxes of soda) AND the elevator stopped at every single floor both times!
WORST grocery carrying experience of my life.
This genuinely made me crabby. There are starving people in the world, and having SO MANY bags of food that I had to make two trips (in an elevator – I don’t even have to take the stairs) made me crabby.
I’m not proud.
Also, the elevator only actually stopped like 3 times over the course of both trips.
I had to do a 1 hour workout on the elliptical and every single one of my tv channels were showing reruns.
Real Housewives of Orange County, Say Yes to the Dress, Super Soul Sunday, even Law and Order…all episodes I had seen before.
WORST elliptical workout of my life.
I ordered and paid for a giant sugar cookie with my to-go meal from Corner Bakery. When I got home and looked in the bag – no giant sugar cookie!
WORST 2 minutes of my life.
2 minutes being the time I could have been happily eating my giant sugar cookie…you know, if I’d gotten it.
That was one week – just one!
So, in conclusion: I still think that Mr. Fed Ex was being a drama queen…but I'm willing to concede that he’s not the BIGGEST drama queen in the whole world (a certain extremely healthy iced coffee drinker may already hold that title).
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