I caught a glimpse of my former self at the mall on Sunday.
I was wearing a blue and white striped shirt, khaki shorts, and New Balance running shoes. I stepped on to an escalator behind a man about my height, same hair color, and he was wearing a blue and white striped shirt, khaki shorts, and New Balance running shoes. His socks were those 3/4 length kind that get close to the ankle; my socks were the kind that barely peek out of the shoe. Those, and the slightly broader stripes on his shirt, were the only major differences. Oh, and his shirt was tucked in. Now that I’m unemployed I no longer feel the need to tuck in my shirt. Or wear underwear, or shave, but that’s another post.
The man’s cell phone rang, he answered, and within seconds he was embroiled in what I recognized as a standard On-Call IT Guy Moment.
(For new readers, I used to be an IT guy. Not quite the standard support drone you all love, but whatever. I was an IT guy. Who cares, really, what I did? IT guy. IT guy. IT guy.)
I won’t bore you with the technical recap. The important part of the story is that when this guy got on the escalator on a nice, lazy Sunday morning in Savannah, he was probably happy. I bet he was headed to the Food Court to get a slice of pizza, because that’s what I was going to do and we dressed the same so I bet we eat the same.
Halfway up the escalator he still held out hope that it would be a quick call. “If this can wait,” he said, “I can check it out on Monday.”
Wrong answer.
By the top of the escalator he was giving time estimates: “Well, I’m at the mall right now and don’t have my computer. I can be home in 20 minutes or so…what? Okay, yeah, I can be home in 15 minutes or so and help you from there…okay, okay, yeah, well, it could mean that she lost her files but I can’t be sure…what? Okay, I’ll call you from home.”
The range of emotions — happy to hopeful to trying to scramble around and justify not being parked at his home computer waiting for the phone to ring — brought back a familiar sense of fatigue. There I was, the Ghost of On-Call IT Guy Future, standing right behind him and I couldn’t offer any consolation.
The man did an about-face and hopped on the down escalator. He sighed. He looked dejected. If our taste in clothes matches, I bet our temper does, too, so he probably sat in his car and screamed profanities and bashed his head against the steering wheel until he passed out.
Those moments are why the MFA Days that Suck don’t suck that bad.
Those moments are why my stomach still seizes up every time my cell phone rings, no matter what stupid ringer I choose.
Those moments are why my work cell phone was hurled with great velocity on to the cement parking pad behind my house. I did that for you, Mr. IT Guy, and I’m sorry I can’t do more.
If you’re one of those countless IT folks that takes it all with a smile on his/her face, happy to be helping people, well, bless you, dear children. You are saints.
{ 3 } Comments
I hate those moments–when I run into someone talking on a Treo, trying to negotiate a contract, wearing a LaCoste polo and seersucker shorts.
On the one hand, it’s great, b/c I can laugh at myself by laughing at that guy. I’d never wear seersucker shorts. But on the other hand, I am turning into a corporate mf’r, and there really isn’t much turning back at this point.
I had a reverse moment like that when i was golfing the other day–another manifestation of my conversion to the other side. There were these hippies walking in the fairway, just enjoying a beautiful day and heading back to their VW van after a rigorous drum solo session in the woods. I couldn’t get over what that meant if folded like a one-slice of bread crap sandwich of time against me in college. I hit a great drive, though, and grabbed some doritos at the turn.
When you see these alternate selves, do you ever say anything to them?
You should have tried to hit the hippies — you get 2 strokes for that.
I never say anything to the alternates. They’re on their own…to each his/her own and all that. I can’t say one path is better than the next. I *can* say that on-call time is a thing of the past for me.
I will miss the “meetings” out on Hilton Head’s golf courses. Strangely enough, that was the one place I was allowed to ignore urgent phone calls.
That’s where we have our “Sales Training.” It’s amazing how a game I made so much fun of has become a game that I would play every single day.
You’ll have fun golf in Nashville with the hilly courses, wooded courses, and rough so thick you lose balls taking a drop. Not to mention that just down the highway a piece in northern Alabama are the Robert Trent Jones courses (public, 7,000 yards long, and about 25 bucks for 18 to ride).
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