Thursday, June 02, 2011

I'm cranky

It has been a trying day.  It started out good enough.  We had a really nice time last night with some friends who we had over for supper to celebrate a birthday.  I was happy as I headed to work, little did I know what was awaiting me when I got there.  I got to the office, turned on the computer, went to the back room to put my stuff away and went into my treatment room to get my table ready for my first client.  The first thing that struck me when I opened the door to my room was heat. 

For the last few weeks when I have gotten to work in the morning it has been cold in the office.  Today was no exception.  Usually somewhere between 16 and 18 degrees in the office, but as the day goes on it warms up.  However, my room was abnormally warm.  And a millisecond later I was hit with a rather foul smell.  At first I thought maybe the building had turned on the furnace after months of not using it.  At first it smelled a little like burnt dust from a heater that has been unused for a period of time.  My second thought was my space heater!  But I looked at it, and it was cold and turned off.  I finally realized it was my electric roasting oven.  It is an 18 quart electric oven that I use to heat stones for doing hot stone massage.  I looked at it and the dial was turned to 300F!  I grabbed the lid and opened it.  After being met by a billow of black smoke, I realized that the rubber mat that I use in there to keep the stones from sliding around in the bottom was thoroughly melted and burned to the bottom of the roaster.  After choking and gagging a bit I grabbed the roaster and unplugged it and pulled out the insert that comes out to wash and put it in our sink and ran water on it to cool it down.  I then proceeded to call both the building manager and my coworker who owns our clinic to tell them what had happened. 

I am assuming that the cleaners must have accidentally turned it on last night while they were cleaning, so it was roasting at 300F for at least 14 hours.  Thank God it didn't start a fire!  My room smells awful, but by the end of the day today it was tolerable.  I don't know if my clients were just being nice to me, but when I appologized for the awful smell, they all assured me that they weren't sure they could smell anything out of the ordinary.  My roaster is now in the garbage and I am hoping that either the building, or the cleaning company will buy me a new roaster.  I realize it was an accident, but I think that someone should be held accountable for it.

After that wonderful excitement my day progressed alright.  I had a large gap in the middle of my afternoon that I was able to at least partially fill with going to get the van plates canceled and giving my coworker a massage.  My last client was booked to come at 5:15pm.  It was a new client and I sat and waited until the phone rang around 5pm.  It was the client's girlfriend.  She explained that she had been in for a massage with my coworker this afternoon and that my coworker mentioned that the boyfriend's appointment was at 5:15pm, but she had booked it for 5:30pm.  I said, no it is at 5:15pm.  She went on about how much her boyfriend needed the treatment, and how sore he was and blah blah blah.  I told her that I would do what I could, but that the appointment was for 5:15pm and I would not be able to treat him at 5:30. 

When the boyfriend showed up, it was about 5:20 and then he had to fill out his form.  By the time he did that, and he got on the table it was closer to 5:30pm.  When I was going over his health form with him, I mentioned that there had been a mix up about the appointment time and that our treatment would be a bit shorter, but I would do what I could in the time we had left.  He told me that his girlfriend had called him and told him that the appointment was set for 5:30pm, after I had talked to her. :P

I just get really annoyed with people who show up late for an appointment and either expect to get their treatment extended, OR people who show up for an hour treatment 15 minutes late and say something like, "Oh, you can just give me a 45 minute treatment."  No, you booked for an hour, you will get 45 minutes and pay for an hour long treatment.  I couldn't believe it a couple of weeks ago when my coworker had a no show client who had booked her appointment the morning of the appointment.  When she called her to see if she was coming, and to inform her of our cancellation fee, the client had the audacity to ask if there was any way she could get out of paying the fee.  It bugs me how people can be so selfish.

Now that I have gotten that off my chest I am going to go eat a big piece of leftover birthday cake and all of life's troubles will melt away, like the rubber mat in the bottom of my roaster. 

2 comments:

Jason said...

Jeepers, I hope things are better now!

Lyn said...

I feel the same way about piano sometimes - I am here, I have set aside this time for you, and you are responsible for paying me for this time, regardless of your own problems in getting here. And it's not like your clients or my students did not know in advance....