Pay Attention
November 16, 2017 Uncategorized 1 comment tashe18
Some jobs are harder than others. Some jobs have a lot of requirements. I work at Dunkin’ Donuts, and it’s a surprisingly difficult job. People expect fast, friendly, accurate service all the time no matter how rude they are. This day was unusually full of rude people in the drive through. So I had just had a bad day at work, and I was very ready to go home. When I left I was in a hurry, which probably wasn’t the best idea since I wasn’t in a good mood. This combination of events and feelings can be distracting. In fact, it was distracting enough to cause me to miss a red light and run right through it.
It wasn’t actually that horrible of a day, it was mostly towards the end. It had been just as busy as it always is. The thing that made it horrible was the whole not being able to go home when I was scheduled to. I just worked for 8 hours harder than most of the people there, and got all my stuff done, yet I still had to wait. Why? Because another employee accidentally “fell asleep” and couldn’t be there on time. So I was there for another 45 minutes later than I should’ve been, making halfway decent coffee for less than decent people. At least I got paid minimum wage for it.
So the time finally came for me to leave. I was so ready to get out of there and do all the things I needed to do. I’ve never gotten out of that place as fast as I did that day. So I got in my car and drove off, maybe a little too fast. I was slowing down to stop at red light where it was a left turn only. Before I was fully stopped, I saw the lights change to green, so I sped up to take the turn. I was halfway through the intersection when I noticed that my light hadn’t changed- it was still red. The sun was shining directly on it making it hard to see, so I guess that kind of helps my cause (but not really). I wonder what people thought of me in that moment.
I drove home very carefully after that. The whole time I was thinking about it anybody saw it, if there was cameras, if I would get a ticket, if my mom would find out, etc. I felt so bad about it too. I didn’t cut anybody off, thankfully, I just felt like an idiot for unintentionally running a red light. To onlookers, I probably looked like an annoying impatient teen driver that nobody likes. In the moment, I probably was. Oh well.
I learned a really good lesson that day- pay attention. Slow down. Actually look at what’s going on. No matter how bad of a day I’ve had, it doesn’t give me any right to drive like an idiot. I didn’t like how bad I felt for doing it, so I’m going to try my absolute hardest to never let it happen again.
1 Comment
this story is a great life lesson. I sympathize with having to work longer hours and wait on people that are rude as i have seen it done many times and it makes me mad. I also understand being caught up in my own thoughts that im not aware of whats going on around me. im glad for your sake that it was not a worse ending and agree that many people need to be in the present and paying attention to what is happening. if you dont think you can pay attention that you shouldnt get behind a wheel. this relaization could save many lives