May 13, 2009

• Want to lose respect from others? Just be a flake.

  
  No not this, the other kind

  I personally can never be the type of person to constantly flake out on others.  I know I would feel so guilty and irresponsible if I ever became like that.  Apparently though, other people that have wandered into my life do not seem to have such a hard time being so unreliable.  Let me tell you a little about three of the people that have most recently affected me with their flakiness.
  
  Flake #1:  Co-Worker

  I’ve recently became a manager at my workplace while the former manager has downgraded to just being a front desk staff.  One of my duties is to make the schedule and, for the most part, everyone has been reliable and flexible enough.  Everyone, that is, except for my former manager.

  I don’t know what his deal is, but he’s suddenly have become progressively more unreliable and useless over the past weeks.  He’s only scheduled to work a measly 5 hours over the course of this past Monday and Tuesday, which is a far cry from how many hours he used to work.  So what happen?

  On Monday, he calls to say he forgot he had to work and couldn’t come in because he wanted to “go get dinner with his mom that night”.  I was chaperoning my little brother’s field trip to Philadelphia at the time and couldn’t make it back, so I ended up having to get the person that opened up that morning (at 6am) to come back later that night to cover his shift.  Even though he said it was fine, I felt so guilty asking him to come back because I knew he was probably still tired from the morning, had been sick all week, and had final exams to study for. 

  Later, I asked my ex-manager if he could cover a shift for someone who’s car had broken down 100 miles away.  He responded by saying he didn’t feel like it after being at a doctor’s office for two hours earlier that day.  He ended up doing it, but not until after he tried to get everyone else to cover for him.  It’s so ironic that he has become the biggest headache for me and everyone else at work.

  Flake #2:  Teammate

  I’m part of a tennis league team and we were scheduled to play a match the other night.  About a week ago, my captain told me they needed one more guy for that match, so I asked a friend if he could do it.  He said sure, so I explained to him how to sign up for team and everything.

  Flash forward a week later and he still hasn’t sign up.  I had to call him up and walk him through the whole process of signing up the day before the match.  I figured no biggie, people sometimes don’t realize how fast time goes by.

  The next day was our match and the whole team arrives at the site except for him.  Literally a minute before our official match start time, my captain received a text from him, saying that he can’t make it because he needed to “pick up his mom at the airport”.  (Huh, just noticed both flakes I’ve talked about so far mentioned their mom in their excuses.  Hmm…)

  So what happened because of that?  We had to forfeit one of our singles matches, which meant his opponent came out for nothing.  To hammer the stake in even more, our team ended up tying 2 for 2 in the four remaining match that night, but because of that forfeit our team lost 2-3 overall.  Even though my partner and I played an unbelievable match to win against a strong team, it was all just bittersweet upon hearing the final results.  Great.

  Flake #3:  “Friend”

  This was the disappointment I was talking about before in my previous San Diego post.  I’m going to be honest; this person was part of the reason why I decided to visit San Diego again.  I met her the last time I went and felt like we clicked very well.  We continued to keep in touch over the past months, during which I admitted to having some feelings for her.  I actually even sent her a gift on Valentine’s Day because I was digging her that much, even though she was on the other side of the country.  It seemed like the feelings was at least somewhat mutual.

  She became one of the people I consulted with before making final plans for the trip.  I wanted to make sure I see her for at least a couple of the days, so I picked last week’s dates because she said she wasn’t going to be that busy during that time.  She even took off work that weekend so she could spend some time with me while I was in San Diego.  I was very excited and looking forward to seeing her again.

  Looking back at my old post, you may have noticed I don’t have any pictures with this person.  The reason why?  We ended up not seeing each other at all during the entire time I was there.

  She couldn’t hang out Friday because she had a thing to go to for a few hours that evening.  “Hmm, wonder why she didn’t invite me to come or asked me to do something after that event”, I thought.  Whatever, there were still a few more days we could hang out so I thought it was no big deal.

  She canceled on coming to Sea World that Saturday.  She said that after thinking about it, she couldn’t really afford to go and she doesn’t really enjoy going to Sea World.  Understandable I suppose.  However my other friend did point out that her reasons she gave shouldn’t have mattered since the main point should be spending time with me during the limited time I was there. 

  I gave her one last chance anyway.  She had said previously she was free Sunday to hang out at the beach until 5pm.  I called her the night before to see if we were still on for that, hoping that she would make up for ditching me the last couple of days.  I should have followed my instincts; she told me that she can’t hang out because she had to go to church with her family, which is something she supposedly does every week.  Geez, thanks for letting me know that before I booked my trip -_- .

  Needless to say, I haven’t tried to contact her ever since.  Lesson learned.

  All these people have caused me so much problems, but that isn’t my main issue with flakes.  Whether they know it or not, their actions (or, in this case, inactions) do not just affect me but everyone else.  My co-workers had to suffer from my ex-manager not following through.  My team had to suffer an embarrassing lost due to my friend’s irresponsibility.  I put more burden on the person I stayed with on my trip, who ended up having to spend more time than she thought she would with me after my friend ditched out

  In the end, it just makes me look like a complete jackass when I tell people one thing and it doesn’t happen due to someone else’s negligence.  I’m a man of my word, and when I can’t keep my words due to someone else I get really frustrated and upset.  I can understand why some people become so jaded as to just cut out these types of people out of their lives forever.

  I haven’t quite reach that point just yet though, as I reasonably try to give people chances to redeem themselves if it’s possible.  Despite all the headaches I get from these type of people, I try to stay optimistic.  I hope, like some of my current friends have done for me, that they will eventually get their act together and make up for all their crap.  Unfortunately, I’m still waiting to see if that’s going to happen for the three people I’ve mentioned above.

  Yeah, I hope you don’t fault me if I don’t hold my breathe for that.

  • 7:40 pm
  • 127 Comments