Calling into work sick.

Everybody calls into work sick at some point, right? But I think we can all agree that sometimes we’re not actually sick when we call in. This was a topic on the country radio station this week, “why have you called in sick to work?” I was immediately reminded of the first time I went to the Rugby Sevens tournament in Vancouver…

I had been working for this company for over a year already, and I had never called in sick. So when my dad told me he had an extra ticket to the tournament I figured, “what’s the harm?” I called in with a fake cough and funny sounding voice to really sell it too. Of course, the guy on the other line was the coworker that had a crush on me… Just my luck! Ralph was incedibly concerned, and said I should most definitely take the weekend off. This would come back to bite me in the ass later.

I took the skytrain downtown to the stadium. Now this ride was definitely one of the most memorable yet. I was sitting in a seat facing another train car, in the opposite direction of the train’s movements. To my right and left were people decked head to toe in Canadian garb, clearly on their way to the stadium too. I soon found out that alcohol was not served at the tournament until 11am, and this did not bode well for my skytrain pals. Don’t worry though, they came prepared, the guy on my right pulled out a flask and began to pass it around. Honestly everyone on the train seemed to already be drunk, and it was only 9am.

About halfway downtown I noticed a guy waving to me from the window of the opposite train. This was odd. I definitely did not know him. We essentially began to have a strange sort of conversation, using only hand gestures and mouthing words. At this point, my Canandian teammates had taken notice, “do you know someone in the other train?”, one of the girls to my left asked. “No, this guy just started a conversation with me through the window…” They all leaned over to have a look, and it was decided that this must be my soulmate. The drunks were so excited, they figured that they were witnessing history in the making. “Maybe he will exit the train when you do in order to meet you!”, they prophesied.

And that he did. As I left the train at the stadium stop, out of the corner of my eye I saw the cute guy from the train quickly moving through his car. He walked straight towards me and stopped only two feet from me. He had a huge smile on his face. He said, “I’m sorry if this is weird but I wanted to come tell you that I think you have one of the most beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen.” Well that was nice. “I’m Daniel”, he said with his hand outstretched. “What are you up to right now? Do you want to grab a coffee?” Well shoot. I honestly regret what happened next. I was so thrown off and not thinking that I essentially bolted from the station.

I quickly explained to him that I was actually in a hurry to head to the stadium for rugby and I left without even a phone number. For whatever reason I didn’t want my dad to find me in this moment and have to explain. That was dumb. Oh what could have been. But a lovely meet cute nevertheless. I definitely learned from this experience, and was sure to get a phone number from all future encounters on public transport.

I finally made it to the stadium. This was the first time of many Rugby Sevens tournaments to come. All was well for a few hours, when all of a sudden the screen swung to the crowd, specifically to a guy dressed as Santa Claus. Now costumes are the norm at these tournaments, but something about this Santa caught my eye. It was the warehouse manager from my work…not only that, my supervisor was sitting right next to him… I prayed that I wouldn’t run into them and yet, of course I did, right near the popcorn stand. “Oh! You had the day off too? How nice!” “Mmhmm” I replied. I got out of there fast.

Now you would think that I was in the clear wouldn’t you? I thought so too. That is until I saw my face on the big screen…again, I prayed, this time that the TV in the staff room at work was not on to Rugby. When I walked in on Monday morning, and saw the look of disappointment on Ralph’s face, I knew that it had been.

I had fun at the tournament, but I did not get the number of the cute boy from the train, and now the cute boy at work was disappointed in me. Moral of the story; don’t call in sick to work to attend televised sporting events.