Some people never see my capable side
(Originally published February 2023)
For the record, I am not incompetent.
I am a responsible adult. I back up my hard drive. I have no overdue library books. I remember to put out the trash and recycling on the right day more than 80 percent of the time.
I need to make this clear because I have two or three acquaintances who, in repeated interactions with me, have only seen my flaky side. It’s like I save up all my most discombobulated moments for them, giving the skewed impression that I don’t have my act together. Instead of “She seems nice,” they leave our exchanges thinking, “How does that woman hold down a job?”
The most recent incident concerns a gentleman in town who, every year, solicits our business for an ad in support of an annual community event. Every year, I say yes.
And every spring for the past four or five years, I’ve gotten an email from him, saying, “Hey, remember that ad we talked about this winter? I never received a check.”
I always think he is mistaken. So I run a search through Quickbooks to see whether the check has cleared. It hasn’t—because I never wrote it. What is wrong with me?
“I have two or three acquaintances who, in repeated interactions with me, have only seen my flaky side.”
The first couple of times, he probably thought, “It’s just an oversight. Could happen to anyone.” But by the third or fourth round of this nonsense, he had to have me pegged as an airhead, if not a deadbeat.
Last April, my stomach dropped when I saw his yearly “Where’s the check?” follow-up email. Again?
“I’m not always like this,” I wanted to tell him. “I show up early for appointments. I floss.” But I knew he’d never believe me.
Yesterday, the man sent his usual request asking me to buy an ad. The way he kept up the pretense that I might actually follow through for once meant a lot to me. This time, I was determined to prove to him that I could, in fact, complete a simple business transaction.
Minutes later, I printed out a check made payable to the event in question but addressed to him—as he had explicitly instructed in his email. I let him know that within the hour I would be bringing it, in person, to his place of business.
“I’ll show him competence,” I muttered, grabbing my keys.
When I returned home, I saw an email from him. I expected it to say, “Thank you for being reliable and organized, like a normal person.” Instead, he explained that I had messed up again: I had made the check payable to him, not the event.
But that wasn’t possible; I had been so careful. I confirmed that in Quickbooks, the check was correct, and I told him so.
In rebuttal, he sent a photo of the check. And it was not, in fact, correct. Quickbooks had done me dirty.
“I am so sorry,” I wrote, struggling to come up with a justification. “For what it’s worth, I have no overdue library books.”
I played around with Quickbooks, and for some reason, no matter what I entered for the payee or what showed on the screen, the man’s name insisted on appearing on the printed check. I finally solved the problem by having a good cry, deleting all mention of him or the event from Quickbooks, and reentering them. After multiple failed printing attempts, I got it right on the fifth try.
Too embarrassed to return to his business, I told him I would mail him the check immediately. And I did.
In bed last night, I mused on how unfortunate it was that my flashes of ineptitude seem to occur over and over with the same handful of individuals. Then again, maybe it was better this way, to look scatterbrained all the time to a few people rather than to look scatterbrained to everyone, if only now and then.
At least, I told myself, I had resolved the current mishap and improved on previous years. If nothing else, for the first time ever, the check was in the mail weeks before the deadline.
I was drifting off, soothed by the notion that I had redeemed myself a little bit, when a mortifying thought snapped me back to full wakefulness.
Had I remembered to put a stamp on the envelope?
