Until…

I woke up 25 minutes past when I should have left for work. After showering, throwing on some clothes, scrunching my hair into a lumpy ponytail, putting on minimal makeup, and wishing I had time to eat something, or at least find some food to bring along, I was out the door.

Naturally, my car was almost out of gas. I always seem to decide “I’ll just gas up in the morning” on evenings preceding late-starting mornings. So I stopped at the Arco on my way. I pulled up to a vacant pump and saw that it had a large note in tiny print stuck on it, so I drove around to a different one. Turns out, they all had notes on them. The notes said, “Debit down, come inside.” I figured, no problem. I’ll just pay cash at the machine. This particular Arco has separate machines for paying with a card and paying with cash, and the cash machine also had a note on it that said “Out of service.”

So I went inside the Arco to stand in the crazy-long line of customers waiting for the one clerk who had to handle all of the gas purchases manually.

I finally got to the front of the line and swiped my debit card. I agreed to the 45-cent fee, entered my pin number, and approved the amount of the sale. Then I waited. And waited. Eventually, the clerk told me it didn’t go through and to swipe it again. So I did. And I again agreed to the 45-cent fee. Again entered my pin number, and again approved the amount of the sale. And I waited again.

This time, the clerk told me that it would be about five minutes before he could run a debit card. Luckily, I remembered the cash on me and paid with that. He gave me my change in all nickels and pennies. By the time I left the counter, clutching five pounds of coins, the line was stretching well out of the door, thanks to my delay.

By now, it was so late in the morning that I decided I’d miss all the bad traffic.

Nope.

I got stuck behind a guy going 25 miles per hour on the speedway, and everyone else was zooming around me at land speed records, so I just had to stay put.

On I-5, I passed a stalled car in the center lane, an accident off to the right side, and an ecology crew in day-glo orange vests, all of which made traffic crawl. It’s not every day you see such fascinating attractions on the freeway, so we all had to slow down for gawking.

I finally arrived at work sometime between 9:30 and 10, feeling sheepish that I was so late.

But it’s all good, because my supervisor rolled in around 10:30.