Today is a busy day - Danielle and I are spending the majority of our day at the Client's site, recording narration and taking screen grabs etc. It's a hectic and complicated day trying to co-ordinate with a very busy Subject Matter Expert and a multimedia developer or two. We decided to break for lunch for half an hour at 12:30 pm and I followed Danielle down to the Cafe Krema on Symonds' Street.
We queued and we ordered and I knew Danielle wanted to finish up her final script for the narration audio we were to record in the afternoon. This is where reality separated:
Michelle's version: Danelle said she was going to work on the narration script *back at the office* - so, when she paid for her tea and mouthed something to me I figured it was something like "I'll see you later *at the office*" so I said Yeh, sure thing. And thought I wouldn't be a copycat follower and follow Danielle back to the office to eat my eggy sandwich and watch her work, I'd be a grown-up girl and sit by myself in the Cafe and eat my lunch. Which I did - an eggy sandwich and a bottle of fizzy Ribena. When I had finished, I got up and left the cafe deciding to pop into Gordon Harris to buy a new pen for Danielle to make her stressful day a little better. Just as I was deciding that the Symonds's Street Gordon Harris wasn't as good as the Newmarket Gordon Harris, my phone rang as I was exiting the store. It was Danielle, she seemed a bit panicy "where did you go??" I had trouble understanding her question: I looked at my watch, it was 12:50pm a full 10 minutes before I was supposed to meet her on the Client's site so it wasn't making sense in my head. She asked again "where are you where did you go??" by this time I was out on the street and looking up there was Danielle walking away up the hill towards the Client's offices at quite a pace with her cell phone to her ear "I was in Gordon Harris. Where are you? are you walking back to the Office?" she said she was so I told her to turn around, which she did and I waved at her. She disconnected our call and let me catch up with her. Danielle's version: I told Michelle I needed to work on the script for the afternoon Narration. I ordered and paid for my tea, I told Michelle I'd grab a table and went to a nice one by the window in Cafe Krema. The morning had been a bit stressful and the narration needed a rewrite, so I got out the script and started working on it. After a while I noticed Michelle still hadn't joined me at my table. I looked up and saw she was no longer at the counter, but sitting deeper in the cafe, at a table by herself. I wondered why she hadn't sat with me, but thought she'd picked up on my nervousness about the day and the rewrite and had left me to some private space. I thought that was kind of nice, in a weird way and got back to the script I quickly scribbled in the changes and was quite productive. My concentration was broken by Michelle passing right past me and leaving the cafe! I couldn't believe it, first she didn't sit with me THEN she was just ignored me and LEFT. I sat there stunned for a few minutes. Maybe she was giving me private space but this was really just a bit *too* weird. What had I done to deserve being ignored? I grabbed my phone and phoned her, she answered and I asked calmly "where did you go?" She didn't seem to understand my question. I asked it again "where are you where did you go??" she was still acting as if she had no idea what I was talking about. I was starting to get a bit frustrated when she said she had been in Gordon Harris and now she was right behind me, so I turned around and there she was so I hung up. |
Reality came together again with the realisation that Danielle had never left the cafe and I had misheard/misunderstood her and then not noticed she was at another table and I tried to reassure Danielle that I am, afterall, blonde and it's a miracle I get through each day as it is.
