Doing two people’s work and a broken car
The past few weeks at work have been particularly hard. A few of my team have moved onwards and upwards to different companies and while I can’t begrudge them their careers, it’s been a real pain for me to meet the end of year deadlines. Last week was a particularly big deadline as we had clients in on the Monday and the weekend immediately before was our work Christmas party. No pressure there then… Unfortunately, I was the only one with the skills to get it all done, and if the system wasn’t going to be ready then not only would we upset a new client, but we would also be unable to invoice until the new year. No pressure there either… Naturally, in the wold of software development, nothing ever goes smoothly and time just seemed to diappear. I was lucky if I got home before 11.30 and was most definitely running on empty. Not so much burning the candle at both ends as dropping a small nuclear bomb on it. I got to Saturday morning and knew that I still had a couple of days work to do. I was on 64.5 hours for the week at that point - just under the contracted hours for two people… at about that point overtime turns to “stupid” time and is decidedly unhealthy.
I wasn’t going to go to the party due to the remaining workload, but I needed a break. So I got dressed up, put on the silly party dress and high heels and drove over. The party itself was the relax I needed and at about 11pm I decided that I ought to head home before I started to get tired. On the drive back, the roads were quite greasy - a combination of rain, leaves and other general rubbish. The steering felt a bit light and I slowed down considerably. Coming up to a roundabout the steering went altogether, I don’t know whether I aqua-planed, hit a patch of diesel or whether it just plain broke, but I did find myself heading for a corner and unable to turn. With the looming bollards I stamped on the brakes - high-heeled party shoes not allowing quite the same control as my Doc Martens! As the inevitable impact approached two thoughts went through my head. 1. This is going to hurt. 2. If this doesn’t hurt then I really hope I don’t have to change a tyre in this silly dress and these silly shoes. I was fairly fortunate in that the impact wasn’t as big as I’d feared, my airbag didn’t go off an my seatbelt hardly tensed. Getting out of the car to see the damage, it did seem mostly cosmetic, although trying to drive off I noticed that the left front wheel was no longer attached to the steering at all. My first accident in the three years I’ve been driving and over 51000 miles. Had to happen sooner or later, but I can’t help thinking that I could have avoided the impact had I been less tired. I’m still waiting to hear back from the garage to see if my car will get written off or not, but in the meantime I guess I’m back to being a pedestrian.
The clients came in on the Monday and were happy with the system, which somewhat justifies the extensive work I had done, although I’m gutted about my car.