Frustration.
I am not much of a morning person as it is. I get through them, because I have to, since that is generally when the workday begins. My desire to stay employed and all that.
This morning traffic was AWFUL. Just one of those mornings. It’s taken me an hour to get a little over halfway to work (total distance from hom to work: 30 miles).
My phone rings. Hmmm, it’s the day care. I quickly start scanning through our evening last night and our morning today: Kiddo didn’t seem sick, he has his lunch, he was wearing shoes (with laces, even!), and seemed to be all around ok. All this is clicking through my head as I answer the phone.
She identifies herself and then tells me that they have a field trip scheduled for today, to see a baseball game, and I didn’t sign the kiddo up for it, so he doesn’t have a ticket.
Yes, that’s correct. Because when it was time to sign up for the trip, kiddo opted not to go so I didn’t sign the form or pay the money. Obviously.
The problem is that apparently they didn’t make plans to have someone stay behind with the children who weren’t going on this field trip. As a matter of fact, they just assumed I would make other arrangements for child care for that day. In fact, the only response I got when I told them (over a week ago) that he wasn’t interested in attending was, “Ok, then - I’ll just mark him down as a ‘No.’” Great, sounds good! No mention of alternate child care. At. All.
She started to go on about how they made it clear that no one would be here, at which point I had to stop her, because NO they so did not make it clear. Unless by “clear” you mean “mind reader” in which case - uhm, still NOT. Last time I checked anyway. Regardless, it’s obvious someone didn’t make it clear at all, because the only thing clear right now is that this is surprising and also upsetting NEWS to me.
She really couldn’t have cared less. All she knew was that he wasn’t scheduled to go and I needed to come and get him. Because they were all leaving and no one would be there to watch him.
I can write about it now, hours after the fact, when I’m not nearly as riled as I was. I couldn’t stop myself from giving her an earful on how completely unacceptable the lack of communication was. I asked what exactly should I do, you know, given that I was on my way to WORK, so that I could oh I don’t know, keep myself employed at an actual paying JOB. In the interest of housing and clothing and feeding the child I’m responsible for, but you know - no big deal or anything.
Her response was basically along the lines of, “Don’t know. Don’t care. Not my problem.”
I called his dad to see what we should do, do I need to bail on work or should he? We throw around ideas and come up with a loose gameplan. No sooner do we hang up and she calls back again to tell me that they had a cancellation last night and he could use that ticket to go to the game.
FIRST. Why wasn’t that part of the original conversation?
Second. I am so thoroughly annoyed at this point I just decide to hell with it, I am going to go pick him up and work from home. I’ll just have to deal with the reaction from work on that later.
Third. If I had another childcare to send him to I would yank him out of there TODAY, on the grounds that this is not the first “surprise - we are not available today!” that I have had with them. Not to mention the near-misses in the past due to the crappy communication from them.
I am slowly getting fed up with pretty much the whole world right now… AND I gave up coffee this week!
