Today, I panicked.
Switzerland is 6 hours ahead of Ottawa, so I should have been getting paid shortly after 6 am Geneva time. The key words there were "Should Have Been." I was awake around then, after a lousy night of sleep (I was awake from 3:30 am to 5 am), so I got online and checked. No money.
Today, Etienne and I had planned to go back into Geneva for shopping, as he had found a suit he liked and wanted to buy to wear at his sister's wedding. Etienne slowly woke up, and checked his bank account; he had been paid. I was starting to worry. The department I work for recently reorganized and moved much of the compensation and benefits functions of its HR to a generic centre housed in Winnipeg, complete with a generic internal email address and an internal web form for contacting the HR people when you need to. Before all of this, I had a pay and benefits advisor assigned to me, and I could reach her from anywhere, even outside of work, but now...now I was in a foreign country, and had no access to the stupid internal system that is supposed to improve the delivery of pay and benefits. Fuck you, "organizational planners"!
Etienne had to go with his father to pick up all the booze for the wedding on Saturday, and the presence of the cleaning lady forced me upstairs, away from the best spot in the house to access the already spotty wi-fi connection. I sat there for hours and fretted; I have an automatic withdrawal set up on my account for the loan payments...what if I don't get paid? I wanted to do some shopping...what if I don't get paid? I have to pay our cat sitters...what if I don't get paid? Okay...I wasn't fretting, I was in full-blown panic mode. Even Etienne was worried. He tried to send me hundreds of dollars via email transfer that I refused to accept, knowing he wanted that new suit. I was literally on the verge of tears all morning. Finally, I called my bank, and learned that a glitch in the system had slowed the electronic funds transfer. Around noon, I was finally paid, but I'm afraid the stress and lack of sleep took its toll on me, and my bad morning turned into a bad day.
We went downtown to buy Etienne's suit, and ran into his mother at the department store; unfortunately, it was at this time that my outing took a turn for the worse: the store didn't have any of the shoes I wanted in my size (women's size 8 must be a really common shoe size in Geneva); then I got a reproach from his mother for wanting to buy all of the souvenir chocolate at this department store (she said it was overpriced), and I hadn't finished looking around before Etienne and his mother were ready to leave, headed for a cheaper place to buy all of the chocolate. As my stress levels were already disturbingly high, I'm afraid I had one of my infamous meltdowns, right there in front of his mother. She took her leave of us, and I felt horrible. I didn't cause a scene or anything, but I was so overwrought with the whole situation, it was terribly uncomfortable.
After the horror of all of that, Etienne steered me toward the Old city, as I think he knew I was in desperate need of a distraction and a drink. We found a bar and sat for a couple of hours, just drinking and letting me get my composure back, and then headed for the tiniest hole-in-the-wall restaurant (Yellowknifers, think only slightly larger than the old Wildcat Cafe) called Chez Ma Cousine; this place has only 7 items on the menu: chicken, and salads with chicken. Etienne used to go there all the time when he was partying in the Old city, but now things were trickier: now he is a vegetarian, and has a gluten-intolerance. He ordered a salad and turned over the breaded part of the delicious goat cheese balls to me, while I downed a half chicken and turned my potatoe wedges over to him. It was delicious! If you're ever in Geneva, and you just want a very simple chicken dinner, I highly recommend this place!
We returned to Etienne's father's house quite late, having bypassed much of the drama that had taken place in our absence, including an unfortunate series of events involving his uncle, a very sick baby (the son of one of Etienne's step-sisters), and a step-mother who had gone to France for the day to attend the funeral of a beloved aunt who passed suddenly. Turns out, I wasn't the only one having a bad day, though I was the only one to have a meltdown (that I know of, anyway).
Stress inhibitors...
...Wish you were here.
No comments:
Post a Comment