If it wasn't for bad luck. . .

The first two days of my new job have been, um, interesting. I have to drive about 35 miles to get to the place where I'm being trained. I drive a 10-year-old car. On my first day, on the way to work my cruise control just quit working. Great! There goes my gas mileage. On the second day, on the way to work my brakes went out. Great! There goes my car! So I get to work and tell them that I have to take my car to the shop. That's fine with them, but I'm sure it doesn't make such a good impression. I take the car to the shop and I'm told that they have a lot of cars left over from yesterday, so they might not be able to get to my car today. I explain that I work in city A, and live in city B, and they are 35 miles apart. Can I get a loaner? Nope. But we can rent you a car for $30 a day. I'll see if you can fix my car today and then decide. They drive me to work where, for the second day in a row the company's computer has failed to acknowledge that I exist so I can't do any of the computer based training that I really need to do. Add to that a rare and frustrating equipment malfunction that means no actual work - except for trying to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it - for most of the day.

I finally find out that my car will definitely not be done today, so I arrange for another expense - a rental car. You might already know that it's nearly impossible to get a rental car without a credit card. Guess who didn't have a credit card? They said I could use my debit card, but I'd have to show them a pay stub and utility bill. Who carries around a pay stub and a utility bill?! Finally the car repair shop agreed to pay for the rental as long as I reimburse them - which I must do in order to get my repaired car back.

So here I sit with a $35 per day car in my driveway doing nothing but sitting there. I guess I should be glad I was at least able to get home today! (I chose to pay the extra $5 for a slightly better car - a Kia Altima.)

Tomorrow the equipment at work should be operational so we can get some actual work done, and the company computer should acknowledge my existence so that I can get some training done. And maybe I'll get my car back. We'll see.