Got a deadline moved up while I was stuck in the I-5 parking lot in Seattle

Client emails me at 4:45 PM saying they need the final mockup by midnight instead of Friday. I'm literally in bumper to bumper traffic on the I-5 bridge, not even moving. Ended up dictating edits into my phone's notes app and finished the design on my laptop at a Denny's off the Mercer exit. Has anyone else had to pull over and hammer out work in a random fast food joint?

3 comments

3 Comments

mason.drew5d ago

Pulling over to finish work in a Denny's because of a deadline crunch sounds like a bad norm we're all just accepting. In my experience, moving a deadline up by five hours on the same day is a management failure, not a you problem. Your mileage may vary, but setting boundaries on things like this can save you a lot of fast food parking lot stress down the road.

johnson.eva5d ago

My friend Sarah had a similar thing happen last month. She was driving to visit her mom in Ohio and her boss texted her at 4pm saying a report was due by 8pm that same night, not the next morning like planned. She had to pull into a random McDonald's parking lot and hotspot her laptop to finish it. She was so frazzled she ordered the wrong thing at the drive thru and ended up with a plain hamburger instead of the meal she wanted. It's wild how common this is getting, like we're all just supposed to drop everything and turn our cars into offices.

casey3425d ago

Damn, that Sarah story really got me thinking. I used to be one of those people who'd just shrug and say "that's the modern work hustle" but hearing how she had to eat a sad plain burger after all that stress is just... honestly kind of sad. It's hitting me now that it's not really about being dedicated, it's about people treating their time like it doesn't matter. Her boss could have just told her the night before or the next morning, you know? I'm starting to see how this whole "car office" thing is just another way companies take advantage of us being too nice to say no.