Don’t be That Guy

Waddaya mean it’s Monday? What happened to Sunday?

I was so busy that I got nothing done. 

It was supposed to be a nice relaxing weekend. Sure, I had some stuff planned, but not too much. It wasn’t my fault; the way it went, I mean. I really did plan better than that. 

The weekend started on Friday night. I had a church basketball game at 9:00pm. Basketball is very important in the Mormon church. Our beautiful meeting houses have a chapel that will seat a couple hundred backed by a full sized basketball court. . .with electronic scoreboards and timers. 

It’s kind of a big deal. It’s also the only fight I’ve ever been to that starts with a prayer. I enjoy playing, and don’t care as much about winning. Some of my teammates seemed to have the opposite opinion. The longer the game went, the further we got behind and the more agressive my teammates got. We survived with no blows thrown, but I was relieved that we’d lost. It meant one more thing off my schedule. See, there was another game at 9:00am Saturday if we won. 

Saturday morning was the only slow part of my weekend. At 10:30 on Saturday I was supposed to take our scouts around the neighborhood and pick up food that families had donated. That was fine. But, at 10:00am my phone rang. There was a problem with the call center. So, I was on the phone with them while trying to get the boys pointed in the right direction in the neighborhood. Have you heard a van full of 13 year old boys on a Saturday? 

Hey guys, sorry, but can you keep it down. I’m on a call for work.

Yeah, I was that guy. 

It took about an hour to collect the donations, take them to the drop-off location and take the boys for ice cream. I spent the entire time with an earbud stuck in my ear. After we dropped off the last of the boys, I went to my office and continued to work the outage. During much of the time I was on two phone bridges; our internal one and the client one. 

I was still on those bridges at 3:00pm when I was supposed to go to the Orem Public Libary, Storytelling wing and judge the preliminary round of the Utah’s Biggest Liar competition. 

Ah, guys? Yeah, I’m going to put you on mute. I have this thing I’m supposed to judge. I’ll still be on the bridge, just yell if you need me, but it might take a while for me to answer.

There I sat at the judges table, watching the performers, many of whom had practiced their stories for months. And I had that phone bud hangin out of my ear. In between performances, I quickly marked my grade sheet and then stepped away to talk on my bridge for a couple of minutes. 

Again, I was that guy.

The competition ended shortly after 5:00. Fortunately, we only needed to pick the six best that would move on to the finals. Judging the finals is brutal The phone calls only slightly before the competition did. A quick dinner and it was time to go to the pre-caucus meeting. Utah’s political caucuses are tomorrow night. I’m on the committee to help run the caucus. We had a meeting Saturday night to plan the Tuesday meeting. My phone rang twice. I ignored it. (I was tired of being that guy. And it wasn’t work calling anyway.) The caucus planning meeting went until around 9:00pm. We were sitting around talking when the meeting reminder on my phone went off. I had a previously scheduled maintenance test for work at 9:30. 

Oh, sorry. I have to go. I’m late for a meeting.

Yup. I was that guy again.

The testing started at 9:30pm and went until 4:00am. Most of the time I just had to be on the call. Occasionally I had to get other people to join. But, I couldn’t leave. . .until 4:00am. I crawled into bed around 4:30. My 9:00am church time came and went without me. I puttered around a little during the day when my wife reminded me that the kids had a meeting Sunday night to plan a summer camp. . .and a parent had to attend the meeting with them. 

We were home again by 8:30. I looked at my todo list for the weekend. He meetings were done, of course, but the projects that I was going to do in between were still sitting there, undone. 

I really don’t know what happened. It seems like it was just yesterday that it was Friday and I was looking forward to the weekend. I was sure busy. I just wish I’d been less busy and gotten more done. 

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren. 

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