In the Right Place at the Right Time

“Hey, right place at the right time, huh?” the Gubber said, flashing his toothy grin as he reached to shake my hand.

“Apparently so,” I replied, forcing a smile as I tossed up my free hand in an awkward attempt to mimic surprise.

I guess that’s what I was doing. It was my first day and everything I did felt awkward. Awkward and fake. I was happy to be here, very happy, but I was also quite nervous. My behavior was jumpy and over-animated and the more normal I tried to act, the less normal I acted.

When I heard the Gubber say the words, “right place at the right time”, I cringed. It wasn’t his fault. I was the one who’d planted that phrase in his head three weeks ago and I had regretted using it the second the words had left my mouth. That hadn’t been what I meant. In a sense, it was the exact opposite of what I’d meant. Describing someone as being in the right place at the right time suggests that luck and circumstance were the primary reasons for that individual’s good fortune. I felt my situation went beyond that and during my interview with the Gubber, my plan had been to passionately explain how it wasn’t luck that had put me in his office. However, at some point during my delivery, upon sensing I had won the Gubber’s early approval, I’d felt it more appropriate to dial down the dramatics and replace what was to be a heartfelt closing statement with a simple, generic line I knew he’d like. Though I regretted my particular choice of words, I hadn’t gotten too hung up on it at the time. Just some more bullshit that had come out of my mouth. But now it was apparent that specific phrase had stood out to the Gubber, and that’s how he had labeled me in his mind.

The problem I saw was that being tagged as “in the right place at the right time” was often an injustice to what had actually happened. There was usually much more to a particular situation than simply being the benefactor of circumstances. Finding money on the street would be an appropriate example of being in the right place at the right time. Whereas an accomplishment preceded by continual hard work and perseverance deserves to be categorized as more than just luck. Not that circumstances don’t play a role, but what gets largely diminished is the effort that puts someone in position to receive that luck in the first place. Due to convenience or our own quiet jealousies, we find it much cleaner and satisfying to sum up someone else’s achievement as saying he or she was simply in the right place at the right time. The part that gets left out, however, is that being in the right place at the right time usually requires being in the wrong place for a long time. And its the effort put forth while in that wrong place and over that long period that is truly the guts of the accomplishment. That’s the part of the story that gets lost, and that’s what I realized the Gubber would never see and therefore never appreciate.

Of course, it would be naive of me not to acknowledge some luck in my interview process, as a few breaks had certainly gone my way. But for me, the real accomplishment had been outlasting my job at the branch, and I found it slightly unfortunate that no one else could ever grasp those details deeply enough to understand why that was an achievement. The hardest part had been hanging around long enough to catch a break, but, that’s the part no one saw. To the Gubber, and to anyone else, that idea wouldn’t make any sense and would be easily dismissed if it was acknowledged at all. And while my silly little job by no means deserves the office’s appreciation, that doesn’t mean I don’t think about it. For me personally, pursuing and obtaining this new position was one of the bigger clutch performances of my life, but to anyone else, it was no more than the moderate promotion of a low-level office monkey. I think that was the part that stung a little on my first day. While I had been ashamed of my branch position, I was proud of the fact that I’d battled and scrapped for more than a year and half while maintaining the slightest glimmer of hope. It was a little bittersweet knowing that effort was immediately irrelevant.