You Will Not Believe What Happened to Me

If I believed in fate, I'd be pretty sure I wasn't supposed to get this Princeton Review job.

So, two weekends (with one in between) of 9-5 training, the second of which starts tomorrow at 9am--sharp! Thursday night we had to meet, however, for "Teachback 1" which is an opportunity for each of the trainees to get up and teach a lesson to the other trainees and our instructor, who will critique you at the end. Four people going my night, last night, which started at 6pm at the Princeton Review offices in Oakland.

I leave at 4:40 from my home in Ambridge, leaving myself an hour and twenty minutes to make a half hour trip. I wanted to get there early and also allow some wiggle room for any traffic.

Well, fuck me.

On 65 heading into Pittsburgh the two lane road goes down to one. It's been that way for a few weeks now. No surprise there. But there's never been a delay because of it. Well, yesterday we sat for about 10-15 minutes. And just sat there. And then, started to go. And never, ever will I be able to tell you what the reason was for this delay. Just 15 minutes gone from me. No worries though, right? I mean, I left myself plllllllenty of time.

Again, fuck me.

Fort Pitt Tunnel traffic. Now, I was expecting this. It's rush hour for crying out loud. But I don't even have to go through the tunnels, I have to go past them. And this was a particularly bad day for that weird merger section of 65 where it hits the city. Sat there for about 10 and called my trainer, cause it was starting to look like I was cutting it close.

I wish.

A mile from the Oakland exit I sit, completely stopped. And this went on for literally 30 minutes. When I finally did get to the Forbes Ave exit I saw the minivan which had broken down on the one lane between me and my job training. And I cursed it. It's 6:25 now, I'm going to be a half hour late.

If only.

I crawl up the exit and discover that, in fact, there was to be another obstacle on my way to Craig st. All of the traffic lights on Forbes Avenue were out. No, I'm not kidding. So each and every intersection was treated as a stop sign all the way in. It's 6:40 when I reach Craig, and at this point I'm not even phased by the utter lack of parking. I just drive around and around, apparently for only five minutes, however, because when my ass finally hit the seat of the classroom I was supposed to be sitting in since six the plastic 9.95 Wal Mart-special time keeper on the wall had struck 6:45.

I was 45 minutes late for a presentation that had been prefaced a week ago with, "Yeah, if you're late for training you may just want to give up, because if you can't be on time now how can we trust you to be on time and responsible for a room full of 17 year-olds."

So there it is, how my first Teachback went. Go me.