Nashwaaksis — Fred Dunlap awoke to a shock Monday morning when he found his family of four had packed up and left and there was a voicemail on his landline phone from his employer informing him that he was fired.
The reason? Dunlop, 57, forgot to set his clock forward…three years in a row, meaning he operates three hours behind the rest of New Brunswick society.
The Manatee contacted Dunlop, who managed to explain what happened between bursts of sobbing and snivelling like a pathetic wretch.
“I’m a pretty punctual fella, and yeah, I always remembered to set my watch back in the fall, but now that I think about it, I forgot the whole ‘spring forward’ thing the last few years…Well, shit.
“I never needed a cellphone, and I’ve always just woken up on time for work thanks to my internal clock. Now I get why everyone called me lazy. I thought they was just messing with me.”
Dunlop’s wife Shelly explained that this year’s three-hour tardiness on Monday morning was the straw that broke the camel’s marriage.
“He hasn’t taken the kids to school in forever, never gets out of bed before I have to leave, and he won’t buy an alarm clock because of his so-called ‘internal clock,'” fumed Shelly.
“It just gets worse every year. And every time anyone points it out to him he just laughs and says ‘You’re killin’ me!’ Even when I say ‘It’s not a joke, Fred. I’m leaving you.'”
Dunlop worked as a bus driver for Fredericton Transit. His employer said that despite his tardiness, they kept offering him more chances to come in on time, until now.
“Fred’s a lovable guy. He’s a family man who wears his heart on his sleeve, so when he kept showing up late, at first we just put him on the later bus schedules,” said Dunlop’s boss Percy Killam.
“But the guy showed up an hour later the next year, and kept saying he knew he was on time. We put up with it until this year when he was a full three hours late and there were no later driving shifts to give him.”
Dunlop’s solution to his woes is to give up on his life in New Brunswick and move to Alberta, where their timezone is three hours behind the Atlantic region.
“I’m too far gone down this path; it’s time to start over out west. My buddy Ernest works on an oil rig and said he can get me a job. I’ll probably be making better money there anyway and I can just buy a new family that won’t up and leave me for being a little late.”