Monday Strikes Back

The Evil Empire that is Monday has struck again. Not satisfied with plunging the temperature so low this morning that my windows on my car were iced over thick enough to take a good few minutes of blasting with heat from the inside and pouring water from the outside, Monday has continued to strike over and over today. Somehow I managed to drop five minutes between going into the bathroom and getting into my car, which meant I should have missed my train. It was one of those things, I guess. Time vanishes into the ether, without explaining itself before it goes.

Imagine my surprise then to get to the station and see the platform still crowded with people. Seems my car wasn't the only piece of machinery struck by iciness this morning. Apparently, the train network was also suffering - or it was on my line, at least. Two trains were cancelled in a row apparently - the one I normally catch and the one before it. Seems that the trains were in such a bad way the Connex were forced to resurrect one of the old trains, that's about twice as old as I am, in order to have any train come through about half an hour after the last service to run normally. I don't agree with the fellow traveller who called it "inhumane" to cram us into that old rattler, but I do think that there should have been a solution. I'm guessing anyone at the many stations after mine wished for some alternative as well. I was crammed into the standing room, and I get on at the fifth station on the line, and ride for half an hour from there to get to the city. There were many disappointed faces outside the train as we moved through the stations.

But Monday still had worse in store for me this morning.

I was dying of tiredness and thirst by the time I finally made it into work, havng stood for another 15 minutes waiting for a tram, only to have to cram into one without any seats left, or be even more late for work than I already was - another half hour or so on my feet. So, naturally, I needed a trip to the shops for a drink not long after I got here. There are perks to working in this area. there are a lot of coffee shops, and pretty boys in suits who go to said coffee shops at certain times of day. It's almost enough to make me get up early enough to try and look pretty for work - but no, not quite; I like my sleep too much for that. So off to the coffee shop I trekked with our lovely receptionist. We normally go at about 10:30 lately. Ever since we discovered the existence of someone we now call "Open neck guy". No, his neck doesn't open. He was wearing an open necked shirt the first time we saw him, and no viewings since then have been able to break the name. But the thirst inflicted on me this Monday was too early. Not only was there no open neck guy, there were no suits there either. And I don't even drink coffee, so i had to trek into another shop for the required burst of caffeine and sugar in the form of a coke bottle.

But Monday still wasn't done.

I once worked in an office which was the architectural equivalent of the United Nations. The boss was an Englishman by choice, if not by birth; there was a Malaysian, an Italian (who has since married an American and moved to Korea), a half-greek half-irish Australian, a south Australian (technically Australian, I know, but everybody except the Tasmanians would probably dispute the fact), a pole and me, the token local. It came as something of a shock to me to find the ever-chatty pole coming into this office today to be interviewed for a job, which she got. I was asked about her - which I hated, since I wanted neither to tell the truth about what i thoughtof working with her again, nor to destroy her hopes, since I know she supports her family - and she has been offered the job. So I'll have her back in the same office as me again. Not something I'm overly thrilled about to be honest. It's something that could only happen on a Monday.

So it's with understandable trepidation that I face this afternoon and wish, whole heartedly, that the day was over. If only Monday could pass as a half day, easing into the week in a way that would be far less painful, I'm sure I could bear it. But until such time as someone is foolish enough to pay me money to set my own hours, I'm stuck working for "the man" - two of them, in fact - and putting in the hours that he (or in this case they)demand. Monday, bloody Monday.