May 10: Am I Really That Dumb?

Day 10: Most embarrassing moment(s).

I really feel like I have been fortunate enough not to have any profoundly embarrassing moments throughout my life (knock on wood...).

So when I sat down to write this post, I could not think of a story for the life of me.

I asked my coworker if I'd had any embarrassing moments since I started working here.

She successfully reminded me of one painfully embarrassing story.

So here goes nothin.

Once upon a time I was a brand new employee at a super awesome Executive Suites office downtown.

The training for the job was somewhat informal - kind of learn as you go.

The first day, my coworker took me down to show me the mailroom and the FedEx and UPS drop off boxes where we take packages every day.

Every day for the next two weeks my coworker and I alternated days taking the FedEx and UPS packages down at the end of the day.

One day, my boss comes in saying how one of our clients had a super important international FedEx envelope that hadn't been scanned or tracked at all, and we were supposed to have taken it down two days prior.

This tenant basically accused us of not taking his packages/envelopes down to the basement.

Every day for those two weeks I HAD been taking the packages/envelopes down.

I do my job, and I do my job well and thoroughly (or so I thought).

Allow me to present a visual:

Here's where it gets good:
See that little orange strip with little words on the left?

It says, "lift here to deposit packages"

Any person with a brain would realize that the entire purple part is like a little lid, and you lift it to put in smaller packages or envelopes.

But apparently I'm not the smart, college-educated person I thought I was, because I had been putting the envelopes in the top part - the place where all of the supplies are.

Here's the thing...

Every day I took packages down, they were either too big, so I'd just set them in front of the drop-off box, or they were envelopes. The first time I took an envelope down I KNEW that it could not possibly be right to put them in the supplies area, but there were three other envelopes ready and waiting to go out.

So I went along with it, all the while with this little feeling in the back of my mind that something wasn't right.

Our regular FedEx guy knew that there were idiots like me in the building who put the envelopes in there, so he would check there on a daily basis and pick up those envelopes.

Well, the regular FedEx guy went out of town, and we had a guy filling in... 

This guy didn't know (rightfully so) that some brilliant people were putting envelopes in the supplies area.

So, my coworker, boss and I are all scrambling around figuring out what happened to this client's package.

I go down to check to see if it had been picked up.

I come up with the package.

It hasn't been picked up!

FedEx clearly hasn't done their pick-ups for two days!

My coworker gets on the phone with FedEx and starts chewing them out, saying that I was able to see three envelopes that had not been picked up, pulled them out and brought them back upstairs.

The FedEx lady tells my coworker (not so politely) that her coworker is a liar and there is no way she (I) could get my "little" hand in there and pull packages out.

Well, lo and behold, little Miss FedEx was right.

My boss had me walk down to the basement with her and show here where I had been putting the envelopes.

I thought I was going to die, or worse, get fired.

So that's the story of a college junior with a 3.95 GPA who couldn't figure out how to work a FedEx drop off box.

Maybe FedEx just needs to make their drop-off boxes like UPS'.

I figured that one out ALL on my own :)

Luckily, we all make mistakes and a chocolate chip scone made it all better.

C'est la vie :)