Update: The Day That Wouldn't Quit It

I have just had one of the worst days of my entire life. I can't really blame it all on the events of today, as the previous day’s activities have all played key roles in helping to make this such a colossal disaster. I'll try and be concise and come back in a week or two to provide a retrospective commentary on how certain things worked out, but as of writing this, it is not looking good at all. Come, share in my grief. Update: Some of the problems resolved themselves.

Here's some backstory to get you caught up with the happenings and events surrounding my epic day of pain. Feel free to skip over it and hit the bullet points to get the meat of the story.

Back Story

First, I'd been putting in 12-15 hour work days everyday for the past two weeks with weekends turning into 6 hour work days. I was put in charge of two large projects with ambiguous objectives and expectations. Both sets of clients literally told me they had no idea what the finished product would look like, or what it would consist of. Now grant it, if the client knew everything they wanted right up front they wouldn't need to bring in a consultant such as myself. But I'd been with my firm for less than a month at this point, and I am a mechanical engineer by trade, not a consultant. Oh, and the Period of Performance (POP) was four weeks on both of these.

Second, I've been looking around during my "off-time" for a place to move into long-term. That took up almost all of my free time and once I had found a place (thanks again to Ethel Shima), it was still necessary to get things together for the move. Taking into consideration my work load and moving preparations, I was left with about 3-6 hours of sleep a day during the week and about 5-8 hours during the weekend. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I couldn't be compensated past my 40 hr/week limit because that would be over time.

Yep, I unofficially "donated" approximately 30 hours a week to my projects without mentioning it to my bosses, clients, etc. So why did I do it? Am I a raging workaholic? Do I just love working on the weekends and going through sleep deprivation runs? The answer is extremely simple. These projects are my first real task and even if they expected waaaaay too much in such a short amount of time, I needed to make a good first impression. At least I succeeded with regards to this. Both the clients were very pleased with the deliverables and other tasks I submitted and management seems to be fairly pleased with how I performed. That is the sole silver lining right now, and has provided just enough motivation to drag myself through the horror that was today.

Schedule of Events

1. Having finished my last task on Tuesday, I planned a half-day off to get my furniture into my apartment, register my car, and then head back to work so I can take a majority of Friday off. Unfortunately, this means the movers need to get started taking things out of storage around 7:00 am since my building has rules about when and how furniture may be moved.

2. I wake up on my quasi-day-off at 6:20 am. I get dressed, hop in my car, and get to the storage facility just as "Johnny The Mover" arrives. "Johnny The Mover" is the name of the moving company by the way. Really great guys.

3. We move everything into the moving van by 7:35 am and are on our way back to my building. We start to unload the van and get everything into my apartment (everything is still packaged in cardboard boxes from the initial transport to Hawaii). Everything except my sofa.

4. We literally spent 25 minutes rotating, twisting, lifting, and whatever else we thought might have helped, trying to get my sofa into the apartment. By the end of it, we had completely unwrapped the entire thing, scrapped up the sofa's sides, top, and front, and put a nice series of scratches on the door frame. This sofa was the one "nice" thing I picked out for my move to Hawaii, and it was the only thing that wouldn't fit through the door. By this time it was about 9:00 am.

5. One of the movers eventually remembered this company (called "Furniture Services") which might be able to help. They redo pieces, take apart and reassemble things, and such and such. I gave the number a call and they said they'd meet me between 10:30 - 11:30 am to see what they could do. I assumed this meant they would be able to start working right then and rejoiced at finally having the prospect of solving my sofa woes.

6. I stopped by the apartment manager's office and told him the good news about the sofa, and he thanked me for getting everything taken care of. I go back to my apartment and take a brief nap before the Furniture Services (here after referred to as "FS") people arrive.

7. At around 11:20 am I get a call and meet the FS guy who quickly looks over my sofa and tells me he is not sure if it can be fixed. I will end up paying about $150 either way once they start work on it though. Considering they have to open the sofa up, examine the construction, and then try several different approaches, I find this reasonable. However, they won't be able to do anything for me until Thursday 2:00-3:00 pm. So there is no way I can get the sofa out of the hall today...My apartment board is going to hate me.

8. Realizing that I don't have any other options I tell them to see what they can do Thursday and fix a PB&J sandwich for lunch. I call the apartment manager and leave him a message on the sofa crisis and then call work to request the remainder of the day off (so much for getting off early on Friday). At least, I thought to myself, I can still take care of my car's registration at the DMV.

9. I arrived at the DMV and proceeded to wait in line for about half-an-hour until I reached the front. 20 minutes in my apartment manager calls and is not happy. He has not checked his messages and would like to know why I decided to leave my sofa in the hallway. I explain the situation to him and he takes the time to explain my building's ornate and multifaceted fee and penalty structure.

10. It turns out that that every night I leave my sofa out in the hall is a $50 fine and a written citation for violating building rules. On top of that, I can't move it out of the building today because it is past the "allowable moving times" and that would cost me another $50 fine/written citation combo. That last fine doesn't really matter since I used up all of my free time today and couldn't take the time off to move the sofa out of the building if I wanted to. So best case scenario, I'll get fined and written up for a night in the hall and the FS people will take care of things on Thursday.

11. The building manager also adds that I apparently blocked someone’s parking space earlier in the day (which given that I was at my storage unit at the time is highly unlikely) and politely informs me he has to tell the building association about my many transgressions. He then gets off the phone, leaving me at the mercy of the DMV daemons.

12. I reach the front and present all the required paperwork to get my registration taken care of. But alas, the clerk asks for paperwork which Texas does not provide. I go back and forth with her on this issue for a while and she finally gives up and shifts her focus to another flaw in my efforts. I apparently need the original title, and not the scanned copy I have in my possession. This, despite what the DMV told me when I called them the previous week...I swear vengeance upon the DMV under my breath as she proceeds to point out various additional fees and paperwork I will need to take care of before I can register my car. 20 minutes later I walk out the door, a mere shell of the man I once was.

13. Those were the major losses of the day. I somehow still found time to find my monthly gym membership would increase by $20, that I had new assignments due early Thursday morning, and obtain exciting stomachaches from eating at Burger King. Other than that, I had a pretty good day.

Now, I want to be perfectly clear, I obviously had a horrible day. Nothing, aside from the initial portion of the move, went right. Things will be OK though. My life tends to follow disproportionate sinusoidal patterns when it comes to good and bad days. I'll probably get things straightened out before too long and be laughing about this in a couple of days, but in the mean time I never want to see another sofa as long as I live. Peace out.

- TiH

Update: Several Weeks Later...

This is what ultimately came out of my terrible ordeal.

1. The Furniture Services folks came by the next day and were able to get my sofa into the apartment. It turns out my sofa is 36'' across which also happens to be the standard door frame size. However, my apartment's door frame is 35'' across. That one inch difference is the whole reason I couldn't get it into my apartment... Funny, huh? It looks really good, and aside from some damage to the exterior edges, looks pretty good.

2. Due in part to the pathetic state of my life on that faithful day, I was able to get the $50 fee and citation waived. I told several board members what happened and they felt "bad enough" for me that they decided to just give me a verbal warning instead.

3. Was able to get my car registration taken care of at a different DMV without a wait, imaginary paperwork, or any stress at all. I might not swear off all my DMV vengeance, but I won't destroy them all...yet.

4. I found that instead of paying the extra $20 a month for gym membership, I can just go to one of the free gyms my work assignments grant me access to. So I actually end up saving money this way.
This still leaves the outstanding issue of getting sick at Burger King, but I think I'll simply let that one pass for now. Until the next fantastic disaster, peace out.

- TiH