I cannot remember when I have ever overslept -- or not since high school. The kind of oversleeping where you wake up to that shocking realization that you are supposed to be somewhere else, and you fling yourself out of bed and into your clothes (which you set out for yourself the night before, in the event that such a thing might happen, even though it never does). I only set an alarm for Saturday mornings because the rest of the week there is enough leeway that I am sure I won't need technology to get me up on time.
But it happened this Saturday. I had set my alarm, but had not made sure that the volume was up. Somehow Jon woke up, touched my arm, I opened my eyes and saw it was 6:08, Thirty minutes late. I flew out of bed and onto my golf cart and was down at the stand by 6:13. Hadn't been able to get my feet into my underwear so I went without, but I did have pants on. I had missed the first truck before it left for market, and they had not noticed they didn't have their money box.
The funny thing is, nobody was worried that I was not there. And the reason is that they don't really need me. The systems are all in place, everyone knows what to do. The clipboards with the lists are all prepared and the vegetables are stacked and ready to be assembled into their market vehicles. I am merely a back-up, in case of mishaps. There are mishaps -- people oversleep, there are car issues, we have made mistakes in picking, etc.
It was easy to figure out how to get the money box to Arlington since we had an unusually big crew going to Falls Church. The two markets are ten minutes apart, so Carrie could go the extra miles and drop it off. That was no big deal.
As it happened, there was an unexpected lettuce shortage and we needed six more crates. Luckily the Reston truck leaves a half an hour after the first one, so I had time to go to the field, pick six crates of lettuce and get back in time to stick it on Michael's van before he rolled out. As I raced back from the field, I saw a deer inside the fence (a familiar one, a regular Saturday morning trespasser) and I didn't have time to deal with it, but I knew I would come back to find it in a few minutes.
Then I loaded a van with 24 crates so I could pick the Sunday lettuce. I knew I didn't want to chase a deer around in a minivan so I got back on my golf cart to go in search of the deer. Couldn't find it. Went back to get the van and found that Jon had taken it, thinking I had left it for him to go pick up vegetables from Casey and Stacey. I had to laugh. The morning was still off-kilter, and we were less than an hour into it. Loaded another van with more crates and of course this time the deer was hanging around near the gate. Usually I don't try to round up deer on my own two feet, but this deer is particularly slow-witted, and I herded her out of the gate and got back in my vehicle.
It is high lettuce season and it takes no time at all to pick these gigantic, gorgeous heads. I parked next to the patch and did not have to move once. Just filled up all the crates from one spot about the size of our kitchen.
And then I could finally go home and put some underwear on. Carrie would come back from market to wash the lettuce in a bit, and I would head to Loudoun with Jon.
The point of this story is that we have come to a place in our work culture where the systems are strong enough to withstand most unexpected events. We can handle anything that is expected -- there are charts and schedules for that -- but we can also manage when the most upper manager falls down on the job. That is really good to know.
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