March 9th

This post will probably be long.  I'm sorry for that, but Friday was one of those long days.  Lets just say that what I witnessed today makes me want to shut our water off any time we will be away from home...like evey day.

It's about 10:30 this evening and I'm trying to stay awake waiting for Jay to get home.  He's still at the school (been there since 8am) setting up the contest.  The total registered number is 1680 students.  Jay said they say to take 20% off of that number for no shows.  Still 80% of 1680 is a lot of high school kids floating around Miller, Mo.

I had an exciting day.  Probably the most exciting day in all my adult working years...heck, probably in all my years.  Up until this point my most exciting day was the time I walked in to see a co-worker staring at a snake on the office floor.  Today didn't cause me to almost faint like the snake did, but it was definitley a wild day.

So to set the stage of this story....Darrell (the loan officer who used to be my boss until we restructred the company last year) is on vacation....fishing...in Mexico.  Even though Darrell isn't technically the boss any more we still function like he is.  Really, the whole thing is a messed up deal but I could fill every page on this blog with the poor decisions made the last two years.  I will stop with that part of the story or I'll be here all night...  Thursday was our Customer Appreciation Day.  I was the same as there by myself.  Since Darrell was gone our receptionist covered the Cassville office Thursday afternoon, but she came back later to help clean up. We had 90 people come in between 8am and 6pm. Pam and I left the office right at 7pm.  I was exhausted, but I knew today was Friday and I would be leaving early to take Camryn to her 9 month check-up.

Pam was going to come in a little late today.  There were supposed to be 4 of us in the office...Me, Pam, Hailey and Connie (They work in our office two days a week on crop insurance stuff).  Are you following me ok?  I know it's confusing but stick with me....  That meant that I was the one who would be there first.  I unlocked the door and immediately I knew Camryn would not be going to the doctor that day and I would not be leaving early....

There was several inches of water standing in half of the office and I could hear more pouring in from somewhere.  My first thought was "Did Pam and I leave something running last night"?  I ran to the bathroom between my office and Darrell's office and could see water running from under the sink.  I opened up the cabinet and it poured out like a flood.  As I was racing back to call Pam to get our landlords number Hailey walked in.  

The next several minutes are a blur....thankfully a customer stopped in right after Hailey came in and they got the water turned off.  I was on the phone off and on with Pam and two of the guys "in charge" out of Springfield.  Hailey and Connie were checking out everything and reporting back to me....Darrell's office floor had several inches of water standing in it.  Mine was sloshy but not standing.  Pam's area was wet, but not sloshy...then they went to the basement.  Pretty much everything down there was ruined because the drop ceiling had fallen through and the water was ankle deep.  I'm trying to convey all of this mess to the guys in Springfield and the first thing they could ask was "could I get to my computer to work".  I finally had to say that I could get to it, but there was no way I was sitting in water to work.  Sometimes I really wonder about these "smarter" people I work with.  Then they kept asking me about the filing cabinets in the basement.  Lets see....we have a fridge plugged in, the ceiling is falling through and the water is ankle deep....excuse me for not trotting through it to check your precious 10 year old paid files.   What was on the tip of my tounge was to tell them to drive their happy butts from Springfield to Mt Vernon and check it out themselves.  But I contained myself.

While all of that was going on I remembered Camryn and her doctors appointment.  By this time it was about 8:30, which is when you can start calling her doctors office.  But the line is always busy so you have to try over and over.  I knew things were going to be a mess and I couldn't rely on myself to remember to keep calling.  I knew Jay was extremely busy but I figured he was probably in a touch better place stress wise than I was at that moment.  I think our conversation went something like this.....

I know you are busy but you need to call Camryn's doctor the office is flooded and the ceiling has fallen through on the basement we probably need to see if your mom can pick up Camryn because Stacy needs her to be picked up early but now i can't remember if she said 3 or 3:30 I'll have to call her and find out and then let you know and your mom will need to stop by here because I have her car seat (notice no periods in there - I think I said all of that in 3 seconds).  Jay had to tell me to slow down because he didn't understand anything I said.  Finally I got it all spit out in a reasonable speed and Jay took care of calling the doctor.

By this time the Landlord's wife showed up.  Let's just say she was not very nice at the beginning.  In fact she was quite hateful.  Later during the day she was much better so I know it was just the overwhelming mess that made her mean to begin with.  But the first thing she asked us when she saw it was very hateful "how long has this been happening"....Let me see....when Pam and I left last night at 7 the pipe was spewing and we locked up and said we'd deal with it in the morning....Good grief woman - we opened the door at 8 and found it like this. 

Finally about 11 Service Master had showed up and they were starting to get things cleaned up.  Darrell had left his laptop so I was able to move it into another office and at least have a computer.  Except I think not having one might have been better.  I guess the combination of me logging into Darrell's laptop on a different monitor freaked the resolution out on the montior.  The print on the screen was so tiny.  I had to get my nose right on the screen to read anything. Thanks to LASIK surgery 7 years ago I have near perfect vision, so I know I wasn't the one with the problem. When I tried to type emails a whole paragraph stayed on one line across the entire monitor. I know some of the emails I sent were jumbled messes.  By 1:30 pm I was completely worn out.  I think it was 25% excitement/stress and 75% straining to read my computer monitor...but by golly I was working!  Oh, and I did try to call our IT department to fix it but because the call is routed somewhere else they didn't know how to fix it.   I finally told them to forget it.  I didn't have the patience to stay on the phone with them for an hour to figure it out. And they've locked down our computers so we can't even fix simple stuff like that on our own.

When I got back from lunch about 2:30 ( I just sat at Sonic for almost an hour because I didn't want to go back) Pam told me Service Master needed us to go to the basement to tell them what could be thrown away.  I went down and pulled out some Christmas decorations that would dry and a couple of boxes of envelopes.  Other than that it was all wet nasty junk that needed to be trashed.  Pam looked horrified.  I went round and round with Pam over stuff that needed to be thrown away.  She kept thinking we could get it dry.  I kept telling her that printers we haven't used in a hundred years and a typewriter circa 1965 needed to be thrown in the handy dumpster the landlord put out back.  I kept explaining over and over how when things get wet they really have to be thrown away because of the risk of mold.  Pam, who you'd never guess to look at her is one of the most stubborn people I've been around.  I almost lost my temper a couple of times.  At one point she was digging through a box and I said "Pam, when was the last time you even looked in that box"?  "If you haven't opened it in the last 6 months WE DON'T NEED IT".  She laughed and told the Service Master guy she knew we needed to wait for me to get back from lunch to go through the basement.  Pam went back upstairs and I told the Service Master guy to not ask her about anything anymore, just come to me.  He said "yeah, we need to keep her out of it". 

What I don't understand is why we would need to keep anything from the basement.  It would be one things if we were a small business and ordering new letterhead and envelopes would be a hardship. We aren't one of those companies.  We are a large organization covering all of the state minus the bootheel.  We made millions of $$ last year.  We are building new million dollar buildings.  FCS can definitely afford to buy us new envelopes.  I don't like to be wasteful either, but if it's wet it's ruined.  End of story.

It was probably a good thing this happend on a Friday.  We have the weekend to recover.  Except Monday may not be any better.  My office and Darrell's is a mess and we've got 6 fans and a humidifer blowing.  You can't talk above the noise.  The fans are also putting out hot air.  The temp in the office from the fans is 92 degrees.  Next week it's supposed to be near 80 outside all week....Pam and I may be working in shorts and tank tops.