It was 23 November (yeah, a coupla days ago) and I was busy working away so as not to get too far behind on work assignments. Plus, I\’d had an email conversation with my direct supervisor about time off. It seems the days I had assumed were holidays for my workplace weren\’t entirely. We\’d had the initial discussion because I\’d put in for a day before the Christmas holiday to lengthen an already (assumed to be) lengthy break. My supervisor messaged me to let me know that the days in between Christmas and the New Year were not actual time off and that they (the non-remote workers) were in the office. She laughed at how mortified I was at not knowing and told me that such now applied to me because I was full-time. I told her I would update my time off request as soon as I could. I had just put the finishing touches on the new request and was neck-deep in reviewing a document when BAM!
Mr. Leonard …
Several times over several weeks, I\’d promised Mr. Leonard that I would bring him a Thanksgiving plate.It was now the day after Thanksgiving, the 23rd.No plate had been carried away from this house.I leaped up from the keyboard, threw on outdoor-appropriate apparel (it was after all, the day after a so-called holiday dedicated to eating, which of course extends into the day after and subsequent weekend, meaning more eating and no getting out of pajamas), put together a take-away plate, and dashed to the car to take it right away.Through all that leaping and dashing, my brain proceeded to rationalize:
Did you really promise or did you just say you would bring him a plate?Did you really say you would bring it on Thanksgiving or did you just say you would bring him a plate?Well, and after all, you didn\’t start cooking until around 4 pm and by the time you all sat down to eat, it was dark. It was only about 6 or 6:30, but who goes out on Thanksgiving night in the dark?
For a moment, I tried to agree. Yeah, did I actually promise? Didn\’t I say I would bring him a Thanksgiving plate … but not that it would happen on the actual day of Thanksgiving?Yeah, that.Before I got down to the corner though, I smacked my brain (in my imagination, of course) and vowed to apologize for not coming either the night before or earlier in the day.The moral of the story? Don\’t listen to your brain …