A Very Long Day

As most of you probably know I like to write stories. I enjoy trying to paint a verbal picture; to create a mental image for the reader and myself. Yesterday, I had the kind of day fit for a story. Here’s how it went.

BEEP…BEEP…BEEP. “Stupid Alarm” I groaned. Opening one eye slightly, I rolled over, slapped the snooze alarm, and yanked the covers over my head. I had nine more minutes. It was during that short period of time that the dinosaurs came back. Running for cover, my friends and I jumped into a pile of old tires. We were surrounded. There was no escape. Then Jeff Goldblum appeared out of nowhere to help us. We were extracting ourselves from the pile of rubber when the alarm went off a second time. “Jeff Goldblum? Where did he come from?” I asked myself as I turned off the alarm and dragged myself out of bed. "I haven't seen Jurassic Park in ages." I was the walking dead. My eyes wouldn’t open fully. Due to a lack of sleep, my head throbbed. Walking to the door, the world began spinning. The throbbing became more intense as I stopped to steady myself. “This is going to be a long day.”

After crawling back into bed for another 20 minutes, I felt a little more awake and decided I better hurry if I was going to make it to work on time. I was scheduled to be there a half hour before opening, which is when the order for our inventory usually arrived. Luck was on my side. I made it before the delivery guy. I greeted him and signed for the boxes as usual. I noticed a man standing in the doorway. It was a customer. We still had 15 minutes before we were supposed to open. Now you can call me callous, but I ignore people who stand at the door before opening. They can wait ten or fifteen minutes. Other businesses don’t open doors for impatient customers, why should we? I rolled my eyes and started putting the order away. My boss, however, is a people-pleaser. He saw the man, let him in, and decided to open the store fifteen minutes early. A fellow coworker and I get thoroughly annoyed by this. We come early specifically so we have time to put things away. When he opens early, there is no one else to help customers and we end up spending most of the morning at the register. Fortunately, my boss was helping the man and I was able to work on the order.

Feeling irritated, I was stacking the boxes as noisily as possible, grumbling to myself about my boss’s competence. Two other employees walked in and I decided to stop being ornery. I had two boxes left to unload when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a woman walking swiftly towards me. I looked up and instead of a face I saw a badge. “I’m from the Federal Bureau of Investigations. We are performing an investigation. Step away from the computers. Do NOT touch the keyboards. There will be no one wandering in and out.” A swarm of men and women in dark jackets followed her. They had blocked both entrances as if we were planning to run away. I glanced at my fellow coworkers and found that all of us stood stunned; rooted in place. Confused and scared to death, I noticed bright yellow letters blaring across each jacket: FDA.

‘I swear that lady said she was from the FBI…’ I thought to myself. She probably was. She acted like it, at any rate. You know the type: the authoritative feminist. She had moved past me and was shouting her commands. A man walked up to me and introduced himself. He asked for my name and then told me to take a seat. I had the distinct impression that they were performing a “good cop/bad cop” routine. Whether that was the case, I’ll never know. I sat and listened as they demanded that my boss shut and lock the doors. The main lady even forced a customer to leave, not even allowing her to purchase the items in hand. Taking long breaths, I tried to slow my heart rate. We were told that they were performing an inspection/investigation and wanted to question each of us. They said we didn’t have to answer questions, but they would appreciate our cooperation. The lady “in charge” said that she didn’t anticipate their investigation taking more than a couple hours. Then she came and asked for my name, address, position in the company, and if I would be willing to be interviewed. I complied and two other people (a man and woman) walked up to me. They asked me to follow them and we went into the hallway.

Keeping my head together was tricky. With the man sitting on my left and the woman on my right, it was hard to think straight. I knew that I wasn’t under investigation. Thankfully, I wasn’t associated with the area under scrutiny. They each pulled out a notebook and commenced the interview. She asked me the questions and they both wrote down my answers. It reminded me of something you’d see on a TV show. They kept asking me the same questions, only they were phrased in different ways. ‘Do they think I’m stupid?’ I thought as I asked for clarification on one such question. The half hour interview seemed to last forever. I found out later that the other interviews didn’t last nearly as long as mine. Why did they interview me for so long? I didn’t know anything. I suppose they were trying to be thorough. The lady said, “Go back and see what they want you to do.” I had to use great self control to walk out of the room and not run like a mad woman.

I left the interview and was told by the lady “bad cop” (who was actually nice to me) that I was “free” to leave. In a daze, I grabbed my purse and walked to my car. I stood there for a second gathering my thoughts and realized that I was shaking uncontrollably. I was shaking so much that I had a hard time putting the key in the door. I sat down and it became apparent that my body was numb. ‘What do I do now? Leave? What if they open up the store again?’ I needed to talk to someone. I needed my mom.

“Are you okay?” I tried to answer but there was a lump in my throat. Unable to speak, I started crying. “What’s going on?” she asked. I told her the horrible events of the day and that I didn’t know what to do. She said she’d come pick me up and help me calm down. I shut the phone and sobbed, fearing for my job and my now unknown future.

My nerves were shot and every phone call made me jump. I went home and remained there for the rest of the day hoping for someone to call me with news. It didn’t matter what kind of news, just something to ease my mind. Janel called me with a little bit of information late that night, but not enough to ease my nerves. I went to bed affirming what I had stated earlier, “Today was a long day.”

I wish I could tell you that I fabricated parts of this story. Unfortunately everything in that story was true. Yesterday was indeed a long, horrible day. I went to work today same as usual, but I am still unsure as to my future. My boss told me that they are facing major decisions in the next few days. I’m really scared right now. Please pray for Janel and me. We don’t want to face sudden unemployment, but if that happens…please pray that we’ll be blessed to find new jobs soon.

[Sigh]