Losing it.

So yesterday, my VOIP connection to the phone queue calls died ( I largely do phone based technical support for industrial automation, glass, heat treat, pharma, or pizza and waffles, anything which you need to have happen because you hit a button, generally involving heat).  IT has been no help (the efforts of our IT department should be easier to distinguish from sabotage by the competition), I was intended to be the only guy on the phone for the East Coast so a colleague could finish a project.  Call volume was low, but since I was alone-ish, I was heavily tasked.  I was not even supposed to go in to work this week, but I was going in today to try to help with that network issue by putting the PC on the hardwired network.  That's the back ground. 

On the way in, just west of the East-most Berryville exit (VA Rt. 7), a trailer dumped a few hundred pounds of plywood on the road.  It was off the road by the time I got there, it was minor delay -- but it zeroed my time margin.

Then there was a delay ahead, reported to be construction.  There were signs.  Turned out the signs were bogus, the problem was a wreck -- I lose about 40 minutes I think.  I MUST make some of this time back, there is an 8:30 call I'm supposed to be on.  I've been written up for traffic making me late before.  If I need to get there an hour early to make sure I'm there on time, that's my problem.  A comment I read on Waze says, "When you get on top of the hill and see the traffic moving it's orgasmic."  ... Ok, so I wouldn't quite go that far.

I get a call from a customer on my personal cell to the effect they were losing 50 tons of $8/lb steel, it was on it's way to becoming $0.20/lb scrap.  They apparently have done something I told them would probably not work, they are pissed.  If it's a huge company for a customer (Boeing, Caterpillar, Airbus, Ford, etc., that scale) it might not be as big a deal.  For a small company, it might be that month's whole payroll --  something goes wrong, they will be panicked.  This is a smaller customer.

I miss the call from my IT guy because I am on the road still.

Then this guy zooms up on my rear, I'm in the left lane.  I go right to let them by.  They hunker down in my blind spot.  I think that's odd. I brake in the right lane so they can pass me - they brake too.

I go left and resume my previous pace.  This whole thing repeats.  He's following me!

WTH ?!

I have no capacity left with which to deal with this.  I need this guy to go away on his way.  It's a simple concept, if you are in the left lane and someone comes up behind you, you go right and let them by.  They go by.  If you are approaching someone in the left lane from their rear, they go right and let you by.

I start swearing, he starts swearing.  Dude, if I did something to you prior, I'm sorry -- but I don't know what that was.

2nd most stressful 24hours this year (in a bad year at that), topped only by my Dad getting into his car accident and me having to tell the doctors he has told me if he has any likelihood of a brain injury, to let him go, no "heroic" measures.  Do not resuscitate.  Mom did not want me to say that, she doesn't want to think about it.  I didn't either, but since he'd had a long period of low blood pressure and plausible anoxia, having had his blood volume more than replaced once and they are taking him into a 2nd surgery at 11:30pm to see if they can save him, it's my job to say it. 

Days (weeks) like this are why, from time to time, I like to go into the woods.