From Mountains to Metro, pt. II

Emotional breakdowns at work, bad. Emotional breakdowns on your second day, worse.

Thankfully, my new BFF Genesis (yup, real name; a total sister rockin' it at the Penn quarter Kinkos) saved my ass by not only being helpful, but overwhelmingly kind and sweet.

Lets begin at square one. On Friday, two friends of mine from college (one visiting, the other headed back to school in a few days) invited me on the town to join them for dinner and drinks that night. I let them know that I'd meet them in Old Town when I was done and went on my way. That afternoon, my team and I were charged with building a large-scale mailing to be produced in-house and mailed that afternoon. Now, normally, this is not a big deal: compile the materials, wave a magic wand across Microsoft Word, print the package and letters, slap on some labels/postage and you're done, but no. By the time we got everything proofed and ready to print, our color copier decided that it didn't particularly feel like coming to work that day. Cool. Total hurdle, but not insurmountable.

So, I roll into the copy-shop at 4:30 knowing full well that the odds of my making dinner are shot but I'm still game for drinks. Tell the boys I'd be there at 7:30 and start making 1000+ back-to-back color copies of materials plus another 1000+ 4-page one-sided letter. All in all, a lot of effing copies. About $2300 worth, to be exact.

TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS IN COPIES ON MY SECOND DAY OF WORK! Now, for whaterver reason, this ignited panic. Its my second day, and I've just racked up thousands of dollars in copying charges. So, I got to get a receipt from the desk and their reader doesn't register any charges on the credit card. Seriously? Okay, so I made this many copies blah blah blah, sign the thing, chat it up with my new friend about where to go in the city, etc.

Now, at this point I'm pretty convinced, for whatever reason, they they're going to fire me over this whole thing, a feeling undoubtedly fueled by copious amounts of caffeine and no food. Swinging into Starbucks, a berry coffee cake saves my sanity, and tucking what feels like seven reams of paper into my purse, I stroll back to the office.

Just as the clock strikes 10:45 it is finally time to meet the boys at the bar...which is where the real fun begins.