Afternoon Morning Countdown

All it takes is a little bit of rain to ruin your sandwich day...

Sometimes, life just wants to rain on your parade. What happens next is up to you - if you decide to take to take action. This was my mission for today, and as can be seen with the rest of this entry, I chose to accept it.





CURRENT MUSIC:
Norihiko Hibino - "Countdown to Disaster"
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Soundtrack 2: The Other Side

There are those musical pieces games and movies will play to heighten the tension of some kind of countdown. Depending on the scenario and genre of the work in question, it could range from the comedic "capture that blasted X" piece ("Yakety Sax," anyone?) to the dramatic "all the pieces are just about in place" ("Shin Troop" from Code Geass seems to be a good example), it's there to make things more [insert emotion here] than usual.

And then there's those pieces used on a countdown sequence that inject you with adrenaline and make you want to race. Mind you, I don't mean street race or run in a competition. I mean race. Maybe you're rushing to stop some guy from assassinating another guy. Maybe you're blitzing through the crowded streets of a downtown city to catch a criminal who's about to succeed in escaping.

Or in the case of "Countdown to Disaster," stop terrorists from doing bad things - like blow up a environmental decontamination facility or activate Metal Gear. That's where this track comes in during Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. As you rush from Point A to Point B in an effort to defuse the situation (pun intended), this plays to make your adrenaline surge a bit.

As I had no time to spare to deal with the "crisis" that afflicted my morning, thoughts of rushing came to mind, because if I didn't solve this issue before I ran out of time, my afternoon/evening/night may not end up as I had originally planned. So, as I raced to defeat this "foe," I had "Countdown to Disaster" play as a musical countdown to my disaster.





Heya, everybody! Josh here on a Thursday! This day is like any other day - or at least it was. When I woke up I totally realized that I had a major dilemma to take on - one that I discovered after leaving work last night, bBecause that's how it always is. Crap just shows up at the most inopportune time as if to say, "Murphy's Law has struck again! MWAHAHAHA!"

Anyway, before I get carried away (like I always do), let me regale to you the events that transpired between 0930 and 1230 earlier today. And to do so, we're going to do it like a story! Yaaaay! (Oh, come on. You know you like stories.)





I wish there were ways where I could perform two things at one time. Mind you, I'm not talking about multitasking - that's easy. I'm talking about performing two tasks that occur simultaneously and are spread apart by a decent amount of distance. Both tasks require the utmost attention from you, and both options are very viable in that you're not sure which one to perform.

Now, why would I wish this? For starters, there's a saying out there that says if you tell someone a wish, it won't come true - and since I've accepted the fact that this wish is damned impossible, we know that it will never be. Secondly, I made this wish because it reflects the self-inflicted agony I put myself through this morning.

Because on some days, life just doesn't go in your favor. Scheduling conflicts arise and you realize that there is no possible way to get both things done. Issues present themselves when you try to weigh your options. It gets to the point where it begins to rain on your parade.

While most people would say "frak it" to one choice and go with the latter, I'm not the kind of guy to ditch one thing and leave the second fully unsettled or unresolved. (Okay, I do that from time to time, but I try to be fair and pragmatic about it.) I want to perform both tasks, or at the very least I want to get someone equally capable of taking my place to help me with the "abandoned" thing in question.

If it were ever possible, I'd get some kind of time-traveling device or something so I could attend both events (either Doc Brown's famed DeLorean or a Time-Turner from the Ministry of Magic will do). However, such things don't exist in our current reality, so we're forced between a rock and a hard place.

So I was stuck earlier this morning trying to figure out a way to sort my particular mess out. I'll explain it in one short sentence: I made plans for tonight, but for some strange reason I was scheduled to work tonight as well.

At first glance, this problem seems quite simple to solve. I could simply ask myself, "What's more important: the plans I made - or the job that gets me money?" (This can also be translated to, "Who do I feel like screwing over more: friend(s) or job?") While fun-loving me would definitely want me to go say "the plans are more important," I realized that if I were to just not show up at work tonight, problems would definitely arise. It's not that I'm important at work or anything (woo) - it's more like being a grade-A douchecake if I just call out.

After weighing the options, "screwing friend(s) over" sounded a whole lot worse than "screwing work over" - so I ended up siding with my original plans. This left me with the challenge of trying to amend the lack of coverage work would have tonight with me not showing up.

Now, my current availability says that I'm not free to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays (although I'm pretty sure I could say otherwise), so at first glance it could be argued that I shouldn't even have to work in the first place. However, since our schedules at Target are printed three weeks in advance, it was apparent that I had misread my own schedule (yay for self-blunders). This put us in a bit of a bind when I tried confronting HR and management about it (although to be honest, this paragraph may sound a lot more aggressive than the ordeal really was). Yes, I knew I should've kept a weather eye out for my schedule to notice things like this. Yes, I just discovered this dilemma not sixteen hours ago. However, I'm here to solve it, and I'm here to fix this now. (What makes this story better was that HR and management also noticed the availability conflict, which made the task of siding with my "plight" a whole lot easier than I thought it'd be.)

So after placing a bunch of calls and trying to figure out a contingency plan in case Plans A through H failed, two hours had passed. Despite this lapse in time, I was still unable to get rid of my shift (read: nobody was answering their frakking phones). I had just about given up and was ready to cancel when without warning I get calls back from two-thirds of the people I had contacted. Fortunately, I was able to persuade one of them was able to take the shift (they had wanted hours anyway, so it's a win-win in the long run), and so I left Target with great relief.

"Does this mean we can go on a trip!?" "Anywhere you want."
(This Persona 4 parody comic totally belongs to "hiimdaisy.")

And today's moral of the story is: read your bloody work schedule correctly and don't assume your set days off are in stone (even if you already cast them in stone). Otherwise, if you're even somewhat remotely like me, you might totally screw yourself over and suffer consequences similar to mine.





What does that mean for me? Well, this means that I have plans to take care of. What's left of this afternoon is slowly progressing into the night, and that means it's now time for me to act.

So, that's that. I won't bore you with any more ridiculous things here, so until the 'morrow, everyone. I'll see you then!

ZOMG UMAMI BURGER NOM NOM NOM <3

Oh, oh, OH! Just thought I'd interrupt my ending by saying: GUESS WHAT'S GONNA BE IN MAH BELLY TONIGHT!? Now I will go away before I taunt you a second time!