Don't you know who I am?

Isn’t that a Spice Girls song? Or am I getting confused with “Who do you think you are?” Kind of opposite my intended meaning, however had I actually said my post title out loud, I’m sure the receiver would have been quoting the Spice Girls.




Every so often, not too much thankfully (because to say the above would mean I’m in a not-very-good-situation) but I’ve had the feeling of wanting to say something along the lines of that.



In particular in relation to my job, if I’ve felt I was going to get unwelcome, in particular unfair trouble/treatment for whatever reason, I’ve had the strongest inclination to say “Do you know where I work?”



It’s something that naturally comes with working where I work, at a particular ‘influential’ media company, with ‘influential’ media contacts, and lots of other people I work with, have both admitted to thinking/doing the same, and encouraging the same. If you have it, you gotta use it, true?



Although I’m not one to take advantage of, guilt people into, or blackmail others into certain ‘desirable’ outcomes for myself, like I said, only when I felt I was getting inappropriate treatment did this thought cross my mind. Never have I used it.



A couple of weeks ago, something happened, that rather than make me want to say “Do you know where I work?” made me want to say something that only the biggest nose-in-the-air stuck-up celebs would say. I was soooo close.



I’d made my hair cut appointment over a month before the busy/crazy festive month. I’m never this early or organised with my hair, only just getting in before Christmas each year, but this time I was there at the hairdressers for a hair cut in October, and I thought “why not? I’ll be organised.”



So I made it.



Then something/someone broke my windscreen. I don’t know who/what it was, whether it was intentional or not, but one morning I got into my car, and there was a crack in the top right, and it proceeded to get longer and extend to the middle of the window over the next couple of days.



I initially freaked out. I thought the windscreen would shatter and cave in on me at any point in my driving. I was yet to find out that I could drive like that for 3 years (not that I wanted to), and in my freaked out state I had to IMMEDIATELY get it fixed.



The only day the guy could fix it, was a day I felt I already had an appointment. But I made the windscreen appointment anyway.



I called up my hairdresser’s, hoping whoever answered wouldn’t tell me what I already suspected. Yes I’d made the appointment so many months earlier, only I hadn’t been organised enough to write down the date. When I found out that the time of the hair cut coincided with the windscreen getting fixed, well I felt I had to cancel my hair cut appointment – I felt it was a matter of safety.



A bit disappointed, I informed the girl that I had to cancel, and asked her what other times I could see my usual hairdresser.



No times. Not that week or the one other.



I took a deep breath, and asked about getting my hair cut by the owner. He’s cut my hair a few times, and he actually knows me really well. I’ve been going there for so long, and he’s always really polite and friendly to me, and treats me almost like we’re friends. On several occasions he’s even bent over backwards to get me in, because I’m such a loyal customer.



No free times for him either. Not that week or the one other.



And then they were on leave ‘til end of Jan. END OF ‘JAN.



I was quite upset, and mad, but asked to get my name and number down so they could call me if there was a cancellation. Surely there’d be a cancellation.



In the meantime, the windscreen man cancelled on me, 10 minutes late into the time he was meant to come and fix it. I told him not to worry about coming another time, and then screamed the house down when I hung up. I was having a bad week.



At about the same time I got a voicemail message from the hairdresser owner, telling me someone had cancelled. I was really excited calling back, until I realised the date he’d given was actually a date I was already booked with something else. I wasn’t going to cancel my work Christmas party for a haircut, no matter how much my split ends needed to be removed.



I asked to speak to him – it was the same girl who told me there were no bookings available the first time around – and when she asked why, I explained he’d left a message for me. She returned in less than 10 seconds, informing me he’d made a mistake and hadn’t seen the message that I actually couldn’t come in on the day he suggested. I knew that, I just wanted to talk to him and get him to help me! I knew, I felt, that if he actually spoke to me, HE would squeeze me in, because HE knew how important I was. “Do you know who I am? How long I’ve been going there?” I wanted to scream into the phone. But I didn’t scream it. I tried to remain calm.



I was soooo mad. I devised a plan to ‘swing by’ the salon after work the following week, even if they hadn’t called me, just so I could see him ‘in person’ and make a ‘booking’ for the following YEAR.



When I came in, perhaps right near their closing time, I found:

Owner

Woman with child (child appeared to be getting hair cut), &

Said women from phone with her hair in foils.



AHEM. IN FOILS.



So it appeared that two people were working, and only one was paying. They couldn’t fucking get me in, a loyal customer, for a simple haircut, but they could put foils in the hair of a non-paying employee. I was soooo shitty.



Owner seemed to be aware they’d been trying to get me in though. That’s what I found surprising. He asked when I was coming in next, and I said with some bite ‘next year.’ I couldn’t follow through though, and still said a nice goodbye and ‘Merry Christmas’ – but really thinking of the scenario there over and over, I felt they could have treated me better, and at least tried. Considering it was their last week of Christmas trading hours, they didn’t look busy AT ALL.



Maybe owner didn’t know I had previously booked, and had to cancel due to what I temporarily though was a safety emergency – I certainly didn’t tell the girl, but she knew I’d booked months earlier, I told her that much.



Maybe I should have asked to speak to said owner from the start, in order to avoid all these ‘what if’s’ and urgencies to scream “Do you know who I am?” through the phone receiver. Maybe he would have helped me out more. She doesn’t know who I am, after all.



However, it didn’t appear I was anyone, from the moderate, average treatment I got when I walked into the salon unexpectedly that day… from the lack of treatment I received.



I’m booked in with him in late Jan. On the first day they come back. Gosh I hope he comments on my split ends. I intend on making him feel soooooo guilty.



Because clearly he’s forgotten who I am.

I ran over a mattress

There is no lie, no exaggeration to the above statement. True story. Just another one of the random things I do.




This actually happened to me last week. I do fairly early morning work shifts, and need to get up at an unfathomable time in order to get to work. The unfathomable-ness is made even more so by the fact that rather than sleep in an extra 20-30 minutes and get to work right on time, I actually need to leave the house earlier than I have to, just to get parking. That’s just shithouse.



Because of the insane hour I’m driving at, needless to say I’m still a little sleepy when I get in the car; not dangerously so, of course, but even after washing my face, brushing my teeth and getting dressed, I’m still in a bit of a haze, with sleepy-land trailing slowly behind me.



And because it is so dark, well… there is not much on the road near my house, except for some other random poor soul in their car that also has to get up at an insane hour to get to work. Because not much happens, and it is relatively still and quiet at that time of the early morning, I was quite hazily staring into the far horizon of darkness as I drove down my street last week, not aware of what was coming up in front of me…



It was only when it came within a couple of metres of my impending headlights, that I noticed an unexpected white line. My immediate thought was “oh God, I’m going to hit something” but it was so close and I was travelling about 50 kms/h that it was too late to not hit it. As I reached it, braking, I realised what it was. However the brake stopped me just as I drove over it, and I was there, fully stopped, my car sitting on a freaking whole mattress in the middle of the road.



What made it worse was that a car had come out from a side street up ahead, and having seen me approach had to stop to give way. Only they stopped to watch me stop on a freaking mattress. How embarrassment. I had nothing else to do and accelerated hard, hoping to get off the mattress and away from the stupid situation as fast as I could.



I angrily called Hubbie as I sped away (emergency call it was). I wanted to warn him of the mattress so that he wouldn’t run over it on his way to work 30 minutes later. Huh. Like he would. As I told him he was like “you ran over a mattress? How come you didn’t see it?” As I angrily explained that it was dark and how it apparently had risen from the ground appearing out of nowhere, I could hear him smiling. Men.



Every time Hubbie sees a mattress now, he laughs.

Driving in my Dreams

I've had a few things on my mind as of late (as always) but after waking up yesterday morning with the memory of my dream so fresh in my mind, I just had to get it out there.

I had a dream about my dream car: the Nissan 370Z. Yes, it is my dream to have this car, but it will not remain one, because the wish will come to fruition, 'til the day that it is in fact a reality.

It was such a weird dream because I wasn't driving the car, it was Hubbie. It's funny, because in the dream it was a manual, and although my current car is auto and I've never driven anything but, Hubbie and I have spoken about the day when I do get it, that I will get it manual and learn how to drive. That's because the only way to have that car is as a manual. And so in the dream he was driving it because I still didn't know how to drive manual. Although at one point in the dream Hubbie did ask me to hold the wheel for him, hmmmmmm I wonder what that could mean......

And to make it more weird, the car had a back seat, with 2 random men in it. 1, the car doesn't actually have a back seat, (although sometimes I wish it did, so it would make me feel less bad about having a car that only seats one other person at a time!) and 2, the men seemed to me to be some kind of business people? Weird.

What was completely realistic though was that we all went shopping (random business guys included) and I bought a lot of clothes before we went off driving again. I love shopping. So that part of the dream is totally believable.

And you know when you wake up, and it feels like you've just finished dreaming that dream? So all the details are still fresh in your mind, so you feel like you can just fall asleep again and gently slip into the drivers seat..... or passengers seat as was my case.

Ahhhhh, 370Z, how I love you so.

THIS PHOTO IS NOT MY PROPERTY, DOES NOT BELONG TO ME IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM.

Oh, and the car in my dream was a convertible, the roadster version, as above. In real life, I sorta don't care, I'll take any model really if someone hands it to me :)