At The Station

Molly got to the station exactly at 8:00, shaving a minute off her normal time by walking as fast as she could, and briefly sprinting after a glance at her watch.

Buying her ticket and getting to the platform her train would leave from took Molly five minutes. She got to the platform at 8:05, just in time to see her train pull out. A quick glance at the schedule board told her there was another train in five minutes, but that it passed through the station without stopping, and that she would have to wait five minutes after that for her next train, which meant she wasn’t going to be able to leave the station until 8:15.

She wasn’t going to be able to get to work until almost 9:30, an hour and a half after she was supposed to start. What a great start to her first day!

Hungry, hung over, worried about how badly her day was going so far, Molly decided that, no matter what happened from now on, she would not miss her train. So she stood at the edge of the platform, as close to the yellow safety line as she could. This way, she thought, she could quickly get on the right train by more or less being the first in line.

Molly waited, fretting. After several minutes, she checked her watch. 8:08. The non-stop train was due in two minutes, then hers came five minutes after that. There was nothing she could do now except be sure she would get on the right train and hope her new bosses would understand. She wondered if she would even have a job by the time she got to work.