Dating : Refill the Tank.

I borrowed a friends car to go on a short road trip by myself. I don’t have a car yet, I am saving up to buy one. Never the less, that didn’t stop me from taking a weekend for myself. I had to get out of the city and into nature for a couple of days. The sanctuary where I could camp is two hours outside of town. The roads to get there are not the best and the car is an old little hatchback. Needless to say, it struggled on the harsh roads. I got to the beautiful destination and savoured three days of tranquillity. I don’t own any camping equipment so I slept in the car. I did some fishing, hiking, stargazing and of course, marshmallow melting. The last day was miserable and rainy, which was okay because it was the day I had to leave the campsite to go home. The drive took longer than expected because the wheels were spinning in the mud but eventually I made it onto proper roads. The rain only got worse. It came down in buckets. This caused the traffic to slow and with good reason. I couldn’t see more than five metres in front of the car. While sitting in bumper to bumper traffic I realised that I had a project due for work tomorrow. I work in customer service and we had to take the responses from surveys that our customers had filled out to compile graphs and statistics using the data. Easy work but super time-consuming. The reason this project was important, was because it was my final warning. If I didn’t hand this project in on time and done correctly, I was getting fired. It’s now late Sunday afternoon and I am going to spend the entire evening doing the work. I started panicking. However, the traffic started moving again. I raced to my friend’s house as quickly as I could to drop the car off and catch a bus back to my apartment to start the project. I ran into my friend’s house, dropped off his keys, thanked him for letting me use his car. I then sprinted to the bus stop to only just make it in time. Sopping wet, I arrive home and start working immediately.

The next day, I woke up late, still at my desk and with only 90% of the work complete. I will finish the rest on the bus I thought to myself. I threw water onto my face and hair. Got changed, drenched myself in deodorant and burst out the door. Already late, I missed the bus and the next one wasn’t going to arrive for another thirty minutes. I called the same friend that I lent the car from and asked if he could take me to work. He said yes. I thanked him and put the phone down. Two minutes later I got a call back from him saying that the car won’t start because it has no fuel. After all the commotion yesterday, I forgot to refill the car’s tank.

Needless to say, I was late for work with an unfinished project and I got fired. Always refill the tank of a borrowed car.