Balancing Personal Life at Work

Remember me talking about “balance” earlier in the week?  Well I have a question for you: 

How do you balance personal calls, filling prescriptions, making appointments, etc., in with your work life?

I’m thinking of all this because of what happened with my schedule yesterday.  I’m in the writing zone for no more than fifteen minutes, when I get a call that one of the prescriptions I ordered is being delayed by my doctor.  I doubt this, since in my experience it’s usually the pharmacy.  I ordered the prescription three days before and they tell me they are “still waiting on a return call from my doctor.”  It’s too bad that I really need the prescription, because normally I could have waited a few more days.

I decide to call the doctor myself and find out what’s going on.  I sit for 20 minutes on hold (and now I see that the pharmacy probably let it ring a few times and gave up, telling me they “still hadn’t heard” from the doctor) and finally someone answers and does thank me for waiting.  I sit on the phone an additional five minutes while I work out the prescription request, which they say they never received from the pharmacy.  I then call the pharmacy to tell them I got through and why couldn’t they do the same thing, and my phone cuts out just as I’m about to say hello.  I place it on the charger.  Pick up my cell.  Also dead.  I place it on the charger too, and give up on calling the pharmacy to complain.

I then get an email regarding my pet’s medicine.  What is it with medicine today?  I try to email them back, they say I have reached an unauthorized page on their website.  I try calling… oh yeah, all the phones are dead.  We have one phone in the back bedroom that is an oldie and doesn’t need charging.  I pick it up, only to realize I don’t have the number for the pet place. 

I head back to my home office, print out the number, go back to the one working phone in our house and dial.  They say I should call my vet.  I do, and the vet says they’ve already taken care of the request and I should call the pet place back.  I do, and finally get it taken care of (wondering why these two people couldn’t call each other and get it straightened out.)

I look at the clock and it is creeping up on noon.  I’m already hours behind.  I realize in this hoopla I haven’t taken anything out for dinner and pull a slab of hamburger out from the freezer and place it on the counter.  Looks like spaghetti and meatballs again for dinner. 

We all have days like this when personal business cannot wait and we have to stop work and get it done.  No one likes to use up work time for this kind of stuff, but sometimes, it’s necessary.  Which brings about the question, how do you deal with everyday personal issues when you’re at work?