Not puttin' up with it

What a terrible day I had yesterday. I volunteered to help a friend move some things from two separate locations, one in San Diego, and the other in Carlsbad. We were to deliver these good for storage at a third location in Escondido. I was supposed to have been picked up at 6:00 a.m. in the morning by an employee of this friend who should have arrived with a U-Haul truck. We were to proceed to the first location, pick up the goods, and go to the second location, pick up the remaining good, and deliver them to the third location. Pretty simple eh? The employee and I hit it off and I thought we would work pretty well together, and we did.

I should have gotten a clue that this was not going to be a good day when the employee arrived, on time, without the U-Haul. He informed me that my friend had changed the plans and we were to rent the U-Haul in San Diego and leave it in Escondido, thereby saving some mileage expense. Ok, I can live with that even though the change would require more of my time arranging for the truck rental.

Things at the first location went rather smoothly. We loaded up in good time and head for Carlsbad. When we got to the second location, we were both dumbstruck by the volume of goods that had to be loaded. As if that wasn’t enough of a letdown, we soon discovered that our truck wasn’t large enough to take it all in one trip! What, at first, seemed like a task taking only half a day was getting ugly. I was pretty frustrated, as was the employee, but we resigned ourselves to do what was necessary to get the job done.

When we should have been finished by noon, we didn’t complete the final unloading until almost 4:00 p.m. I was tired, and all I wanted to do was get the U-haul gassed up, drop it off at the rental yard and get out of there. The employee called the rental yard to get directions then we both headed to the nearest gas station to fill the tank on the truck. While we were gassing up, I asked the employee for the directions to the yard, and we both took off together from the gas station, he in his car and me driving the truck. It only took me about ten minutes to find the rental yard, and this is where things really started to go sour. The employee never arrived.

I waited at the yard for about 20 minutes before I started calling people to get the employees phone number. After 4 phone calls, and many more minutes I finally got a call back and was given his cell number, which I called. “Where the hell are you”? I asked. “Oh, I got a phone call and had to find a place to pull over.” He said, “but I’m on the way now.” “Ok” I said, and hung up. 15 more minutes goes by and still he hasn’t arrived! By this time I am fuming at his total disregard for me. I called him again, just as he was pulling into the yard. When he approached me I called him everything except the “born again Christian” he professed to be, and used some colorful language specifically designed to scorch his ears.

We rode the 70 miles back to Riverside in total silence and we didn’t get back until almost 7:00 p.m., a 13 hour day!. I think I made a lifetime enemy today, but I don’t give a shit!!