Everyone knows that oh-my-god-what-have-I-done feeling of waking up late. I would wager that it’s a universal adrenaline rush to wake up, glance at your clock, and realize it is one hour after you were supposed to
be at work. Now, take that feeling and amplify it by the kind of rush-y, loopy feeling that comes with the fatigue of having only managed to sleep for four hours in the last twenty-four, and you’ll have what my morning this morning felt like.
For some godforsaken reason, I somehow thought it would be a good idea to work my morning shift at Hillside café yesterday (6:15-11:30a.m., which would normally have been 7-11:30a.m., except that some considerate member of the upper UR Dining echelon decided that students like to eat breakfast earlier during finals week, so I had to have the shop open by 7:30a.m. rather than the normal 8a.m. opening time), then return at 7:30p.m., work until closing at 2:30a.m., and then return (later) this morning at 6:15a.m. to re-open and work my regularly scheduled shift (until 12p.m.). Brilliant, I know. I was just so relieved to be finished with schoolwork, I figured making money would be a good way to fill up the extra time I had until I got back to Pittsburgh. And, to be fair, my friend/former coworker-now-turned-manager asked me to work that closing shift. She knew people would not show up—they never do during finals week—which she knew would make things miserable, and she offered to pay me double. In light of all of those factors, how could I refuse?
Needless to say, I ended up staying awake until about 5a.m. this morning, at which point I was afraid I would fall asleep accidentally (I had determined at that point to try and stay awake all the way through), so I set my alarm clock just to be safe. Unfortunately, I apparently set my actual clock rather than the alarm. Thus, around 7:20a.m. I developed a suspicious feeling—while I was asleep, no less—that I was oversleeping and woke myself up. Sure enough, exactly two minutes later, the manager from Danforth (the next guy higher up on the food services totem pole) called me wanting to know where I was. I apologized profusely while trying to pull on my shoes with one hand and pull my hair into some semblance of a ponytail with the other. I have never run through the snow and slush so fast in my life.
When I got there, the Danforth manager and Darlene, the woman who cooks omelets and pizza for Hillside, were making coffee and putting out bagels (two of my morning responsibilities for opening). This particular morning, I was supposed to open alone, so I thanked them again and ran around trying to finish up everything else. However, much to my amazement and pleasant surprise, because I had closed the coffee shop the night before, everything was already pretty much in place and ready to go. All of the tasks that usually take an hour to complete, I finished up in ten minutes!
I served my first customer at 7:40a.m. How about that for an unexpected source of pride?
Bonus quote: Apparently I say some pretty bizarre things when I am deliriously tired. Here is one such quote that I can actually remember saying this morning. In regards to putting out the bagels:
“Raisin and blueberry go together. Not like raisin and poppy seed. They’re not berries.”
Not to mention stressful. I am now spending the days of my Christmas Break—which were once filled with relaxed, homework- and study-free sleep and pleasure reading—researching different publishing houses and brainstorming responses to questions I may be asked at my Random House interview. My pleasure reading now alternates between Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue—which I checked out of Rush Rhees library in order to read for fun over break—and How to Interview like an MBA—which a near-and-dear friend gave me as a Christmas present, and which I am steadily plowing through as if it were a textbook, taking copious notes and sticky-tabbing every relevant page.
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