First day in the grown-up job

Today was supposed to be my first day at my first-ever grown-up job. Ooh! But I say supposed because:

Fact 1: I live in the UK.
Fact 2: We cannot cope with snow.
Fact 3: It is currently blizzarding.
Fact 4: I did not have my first day today.

Now, I tried to get there. After having to endure the "will the trains be running?" and "you need to get the snow off your car" remarks at the ungodly hour of blurgh this morning (for the record, I am not a morning person), I was über tetchy because a) I could see the snow for myself and b) the rail websites/phone lines were jammed. I had no idea whether the trains were running. Hmph.

To set the scene, I currently live in-between Leeds and York. If it wasn't so grey and I could see further than five metres out of the window, I should be able to see the start of miles and miles of countryside that stretches to York. I also live on a hill, which has some wonderful 45 degree bends. Ever noticed that in the country? Tiny roads that are never reassuringly straight. Oh no. Hair-pin bends all the way. And yes, I know it's land boundaries, but it's a pain. As for what I was wearing. Why, my nice first-day outfit and WELLIES.

Obviously I couldn't find the scraper. It's okay, I used one of my Havaiana flip-flops to belt it off won't be needing those for a while). I manage to get round the hair-pin bend and on to the hill which takes me down to the main road. Except, what on earth are the cars in front of me doing? Why, they are sliding all over the road! I mean, it looked fun, but I'm a grown-up now with a grown-up job - I didn't want to play the "let's mount the pavement without touching the steering wheel and avoid that pedestrian/lamp post/parked car" game. However, like a child forced into playing with children they don't want to play with, I soon joined in. Fun? No. Weird? Yes. I had a brief whiney-whimper, but I soldiered on. Made it to the main road.

Ah, the main road. There's one main road in T and all the houses are off this road. I live at the bottom and it stretches up-hill for about a mile before it goes down-hill into G for half a mile. You can then go left to P, the motorways and the train station, or right to elsewhere. However, no gritters had been out* and the traffic was crawling up-the-hill. At this point, I had already been on the road twenty minutes and managed a grand total of 200 metres - my total drive should take less than that.

Needless to say, I was panicking. My first day - first day - and I can't even get there. It then took me another ten minutes to get twenty metres up the hill, to which I exited right and drove slowly back to my house (more hair-pin bends), as did five cars in front of me and a few behind. Glad to see it's not just me who isn't a brave little solider. Even if I had somehow managed to get to the station for the next train, say my car had turned into a magical flying car... yep, the trains are cancelled.

Wonderful. So, I'm stuck at home for the day. My new boss was very nice, but I still felt like it was personally *my* fault that the snow has happened (so, sorry if your train/bus/plane was cancelled today, my bad!) Of all the days for this to happen ... I just hope that I can get there tomorrow and have my first day because it is *still* snowing. *sigh* I miss the sun.

How's your Monday going? Were you affected by the snow? And does anyone have a first day horror story to cheer me up? Pretty, please!


* Of course not! You don't have to bother with gritters in the sticks. Or pot-hole free roads. All part of the rustic charm, isn't it! Pfiut.

14 comments

  1. Other extreme I got to work and now the challenge is to get the sales rep back from Frankfurt to Glasgow - there are no direct flights from F to G!!! How rubbish is that!

    So here goes our adventure

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  2. Uuugh, snow is just a hassle. I hate it and I've grown up with it, a lot of it.

    Hopefully the snow will stop, we aren't supposed to get any in Cork, but Dublin is.

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  3. SQUEE! ^__^ Four inches of snow!

    Oh, I'm not a grown up yet, so I still adore the snow! It's been forever since we've had snow like this in the South!

    Sorry about your first day being a disaster, it's pretty damn typical, isn't it? :p

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  4. Twitter comment: @john_hunter

    Great blog entry! Plus, even if you *had* made it to work today...chances are your trainer wouldn't have! Good luck tomorrow.

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  5. @ and her heart it is in ireland - It is definitely a hassle. BLURGH!

    @ Han - You did well getting into work! As for Frankfurt to Glasgow, good luck with that! :s

    Astharis - It is typical! I'm not a grown-up either (I'm just pretending to be one and all corporatey-important today. Funny how I was FOILED from doing that - proves I'm not supposed to be one! ;p). Regardless, I'm still not a snow-lover! Yuck, yuck, yuck!!!

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  6. I live in Massachusetts, U.S.A. and we have had near constant snow, ice, sleet, hail this winter. We have already had 20 inches more snow than we did all of last year and it is only February (usually it snows into April)! Since i live in New England we are pretty darn good at handling snow and ice, but it does get tiresome.
    Valiant effort on your part this morning.

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  7. Ah, I feel now I shouldn't moan because I know how freezing the weather gets over there and how bad you have snow etc! Old England (tee hee! and of course Scotland, Wales and N Ireland) cannot cope with any snow, no matter how miniscule the amount is. We should toughen up, but we always seem to hope we won't have bad weather, then panic when we do!

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  8. Oh, keep moaning, my dear! It is all relative and I know how annoying it can be (especially when it is out of the ordinary and interrupts the best laid plans.

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  9. Thank you! I have a feeling I may be moaning tomorrow as well. :s

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  10. The snow in Glasgow was an inconvenience and went on for most of the day, but it wasn't really lying on the ground and didn't really affect anything ultimately. But the London office of our company (an accountancy body) was closed due to the weather. Luckily we are really the head office up here so the important stuff still went on, lol!

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  11. Oh, that pic looks heavenly! Only about 4 more months or so until it's beach weather in Virginia...

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  12. @ Paula - It stuck here, but I suppose people got "snow days" - I'd rather have NO snow than a day off.

    @ Can I just say ... It was! Mmm - sunshine! Glad you're a sun fan!

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  13. Wowww. Talk about worlds different from Chicago. For the city to stop functioning, we would need about 12 feet of snow.

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  14. Crazy, huh? But the last time we had snow this bad was nearly fifteen years ago, so a foot of snow is conisdered *very* bad for us! We only get a flurry usually of snow that melts, so we can't cope on the *rare* times it does settle.

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