Caro's No Good Very Bad Day

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellow,

I woke up today to a very grumpy Caro. The reasons were understandable. She'd had a meeting with her bosses the night before and they'd basically told her she was to be replaced by a local Edinburgh person.

In a way, understandable on their part. But they completely overlooked the contribution she makes to her team. Her depth of knowledge within the company is widely respected, but they are going to bin her for a know-nothing-minimum-wage recruit. 

She was understandably insulted and the spinelessness of her managers didn't help. 

"Are you firing me?" she asked. 
"Errrr.... well... errrr... well.... I wouldn't put it quite like that..." they stammered. 

But yes. 

Consequently Caro did not sleep well. And she had a hair appointment in town the next day which meant she had to be up early. We were to ride in together.

"F*CK!!!!!" she exploded after 5 minutes on the way into Wellington.

WHAT?

WHAT???

"I've left my F*CKING phone in my F*CKING car!!!!" she spat. 

I did what you are NOT supposed to do. I tried to fix things. I offered Caro my phone to allow her to stay in contact with her sister. And I installed her favourite games on it. 

"I HATE THIS PHONE!!!" she snarled. 

To be fair, she also apologised. "I KNOW I'm being horrible," she explained. "But I just need to RAGE. It's not you but I'm just RAGING."

Now Caro has not yet met Olivia. So I was excited to see her waiting for the train in Tawa Station. So much so, I forgot myself.

"It's OLIVIA!" I said excitedly. 

I looked over at the blackened disposition of my wife.

"NO! Just NO!!!" she spat. "I am NOT in the mood to make polite conversation with...."

But it was too late. Olivia had seen me and I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen her. She sat next to me. 

The way Olivia describes it is that she could tell immediately that something was wrong. I was not my usual effusive self. And she was almost SURE the person sitting next to me was my wife.

"Ummmm..." she said. 

She said I looked "sheepish" as I patted Caro's leg and said, "Ummmm... so this GRUMPY person next to me is my wife and she's unhappy because she left her phone at home."

I didn't want to bring up the job thing. I figured she wouldn't want to talk about it. 

Caro - bless her heart - tried SO HARD to be nice. But it was 

SUPER

EXTRA

AWKWARD

Eventually we arrived in Wellington and Caro explained to Olivia what was going on. She went off to her hair appointment and I texted Fazzy and asked her to reassure Olivia that Caro is in fact lovely and does not HATE Olivia personally.

Fortunately, Olivia thought it was sort of funny.

We also had the pleasure of Jefe showing up! He was in the office doing a few tune-ups of meeting hardware. I explained the situation to him and he expressed concern. He said if Caro was free mid-afternoon he could drive her home. 

That was so nice. 

And that's how things worked out! Jefe took BOTH of us home at 3pm. And he was just so lovely! He asked Caro all about it and I think it did her a lot of good to get it all out of her system. I could sense the tension leaving her and by the time we were home she seemed a lot better. Still battered, but unbowed. 

AND her phone was still in her car. 

I took care of her all evening. And she seemed cheered. 

I love our friends. And so does Caro.

And that includes YOU, Olivia.

S.