(preface: I work Monday through Friday, starting at 8AM, at the same company as my sister, Angela)
I just woke up a few minutes ago. Laying in bed, I looked at my watch and saw that it was 9:40AM. The first thought that crossed my mind was “Oh no, Angela’s overslept again!”
She’s been working two jobs lately, you see, and actually just put in two weeks notice at her second job because its late hours have resulted in her oversleeping several times by several hours. If I arrive at work and see that she’s not there, I call her to try to wake her. Sometimes it works and she makes it in, sometimes she falls back asleep. On the rare occassion I oversleep, Angela does the same for me.
The next thing that I thought, and it kept running through my head, over and over, was “no one called me?” “No one called me?” “No one called me?”
This only lasted a few seconds, but the feeling was intense and lonely. I know my supervisors have my phone number. I thought about the other people I work with who I’ve given my number to. I thought about how it feels that I don’t actually expect any of them (besides my sister) to either notice when I’m there and when I’m gone, let alone to care enough to call. I thought about trying to make up my hours, since we’re so far behind in my department that even though my supervisors don’t have approval to give anyone overtime, we really need all 40 hours every week from everyone just to keep from falling further behind.
And when I tried to figure out what day or days I could make up the two or three hours I’d be missing, my brain worked out what day it is, Saturday, and that I’m not missing work at all, and the rest just melted away. No one called because I wasn’t late for anything. I don’t have any friends at work because, generally, I consider them too shallow/sheltered and/or they consider me crazy. Which is just how things go for me, and have for years.
But at least I wasn’t late for work.
