… seems to be a #struggle for me.  I am not lazy, I do not oversleep, and I love my job.  There seems to be a discrepancy between these facts, and the actual time I get to work on a semi-regular basis.

The funny part is that as a commuter, it shouldn’t be that serious.  Everything is so tightly scheduled that as long as I make the first train, I’m good to go.  My alarm wakes me up every morning at 6:40am without fail, although, admittedly, if I went to sleep later than 11:30pm the night before, I tend to flounder a bit as I attempt to navigate my way out of my bed.

I shower the night before so all that needs to be done in the morning is my hair, make-up, and clothes.  I’m out the door by 7:10am, grab a quick breakfast to go, and as long as I make it to the first train station by 7:30, my commute is golden.

Sounds simple, right?

So far, in the two months I’ve worked here, I have been late four times.  For most people, this sounds like its not a big deal, but since I work all the way in Natick, if I miss that first train, the next one doesn’t get me to work until after 11:30… 3 hours after my scheduled start time.

Statistically, that’s like once every two weeks (that’s bad btw).  My boss has been super nice about it, so that’s not the issue.  My problem is the reasons why I end up being late.  Here are my two favorite occurrences:

#1. I was waiting for the elevator where I live on the 15th floor, awkwardly attempting to retrieve my headphones from my purse, and clutching my wallet, phone, and room key in my hands while doing so.  The elevator came, I approached it ignoring the precariously placed items in my hands, and gave a final tug on my headphones as I stepped over the threshold.

Immediately, my phone fell out of my hands, popped open on the ground, and the battery toppled down the elevator shaft.  In horror, I drove for it, dropping my wallet which, in turn, busted open on the ground, releasing my credit card and monthly commuter rail pass down into the shaft as well.  In my fruitless scramble to catch the items as they sailed down the black abyss between the elevator and the floor, I knocked my room key down the shaft as well.

I sat there in stunned silence as the elevator carried me down the the lobby, then I collected myself and hailed one of the maintenance workers, who assured me that someone would be “right over” to assist me, as I wasn’t allowed in the basement, where my items had surely fallen.  45 minutes later, a grizzled fellow emerged from the elevators with my phone battery, damaged, but still use-able.

Gratefully, I took it, but was less than amused at his baffled expression upon my inquiry of the other three items that had fallen to their doom.   For the next thirty minutes, he proceeded to travel back and forth from the basement (ignoring my requests to accompany him for efficiency’s sake), as he located my items one at a time.  In the interim, I used my phone to inform my boss of my impending tardiness, explaining that I could not leave my credit card or MBTA pass in the recesses of a dorm building.

In the end, my items were finally located… but not until roughly 10:30am.  I missed all of work that day.

#2. I was waiting for the elevator for an inordinately extended period of time, when I realized that the button wasn’t even lit up.  Annoyed, I pressed it again.  It lit up, and then promptly turned off again.  I proceeded to engage in a number of childish acts, including, but not limited to, slamming the button multiple times, yelling at the elevator doors, and stomping my feet.  I resigned myself to the 15 floor walk down the stairs to exit through the emergency doors, noting with exasperation that no other students were awake at this time to assist me with my elevator debacle.

I briskly trotted down 15 flights of stairs, pausing on random floors to check the elevators on the offhand chance that they only were broken on the 15th floor, congratulated myself on getting my work-out out of the way before 7:30am once I reached the ground floor, and was immediately halted by the fact that the emergency exit was, in fact, locked.   Let’s ignore the danger of this for the sake of the story’s continuation.

I not-so-briskly trotted back up to the next floor with an elevator (which was still not working), momentarily baffled by the fact that I could not seem to figure out a way to escape my own dorm building.  At this point, another student appeared, equally concerned by lack of motion in the elevators, and we proceeded to the other staircase to try that emergency door.  Lo and behold… it was also locked.

At 7:45, well past my necessary departure time and after the group of students searching for a way out of the building had expanded from one to roughly 15, I finally got the brilliant idea to call the police.  I was informed that they were working on the elevators, and that someone would be along to unlock the door right away… I still missed my train.

Honestly… who does that happen to?

I was there when these things happened, and they still sound like terrible excuses.  I was hoping that Karma was making me miss my train in an attempt to introduce me to something better, but nothing remotely epic occurred on any of these days… except that I missed either all of work, or only three hours of it.

In any case, I should probably include on my resume that although I have the best intentions, Karma will prevent me from coming to work on time at least once every two weeks… I think that’s a pretty dope excuse.