I could have sworn I had told this story before. Oh well, buckle up. . . My first post-college straight job was in a big downtown law firm--it shall go nameless but it remains venerable--where I worked in the records retrieval department--I would contact the off-site storage for files requested by lawyers and re-enter data in anticipation of the horrors of Y2K. As soul-crushing and eminently tedious labor goes, it wasnt too terrible--I only rarely had to be in contact with people, my boss was fairly cool and the hours were flexible enough so that I could hit the occasional daytime screening. Not a career but an acceptable way of paying the bills. I had one co-worker who shall remain nameless and who was, to be polite, not exactly the brightest of bulbs. One time when he asked what I was eating for breakfast and I told him it was a scone, his response was I didnt know you were Jewish and when I mocked my bosss description of attending a renaissance fair by commenting about being assaulted by harlequins from Hell, he didnt know why I was talking about bad romance novels. (I assure you, these are not jokes). Not my kind of guy but harmless enough. One day, I am getting ready to leave--a friend was getting married and I was going out to look for a gift--and was walking down the hall from my area to my bosss office to turn in some paperwork. I pass the guy in the hall and without saying anything, he turns, puts his arm around my neck and starts pounding me on my back as I am walking. This isnt especially hurting but he does knock me off my balance and I wind up stumbling into my bosss office with him right behind me. She wants to know what is going on and I say Beats me, ask him. Im out of here. I leave and he is standing there with a slightly glassy stare on his face and a pair of scissors in his hand. I get on the el and start riding up to where I am shopping and start playing the events back in my head and before long, I finally begin to conclude that there might be some connection between the back pounding, which I had taken for some half-assed version of male bonding, and the scissors in his hand. I get off the train, go to a restaurant nearby where another friend works and go into the bathroom to check it out. Sure enough, there is blood on the back of my shirt and a small cut in the middle of my back kind of close to that whole spine thing. Now what I dont know if that at the exact time that this was happening, the FedEx guy arrived and got a perfect view of my coworker stabbing me with the scissors and took off to get security immediately. As I was going down the elevator, security was coming up and they grabbed the guy, who had done nothing else since I left. The cops eventually arrived but since I wasnt there, they couldnt or wouldnt arrest him but they did send him over for psychiatric evaluation at a local hospital. Before he was taken away, according to my boss, he turned to her and said I guess I dont get a second chance, do I?, a line that almost makes the whole thing worthwhile. As it turns out, the guy had a few problems and delusions and was convinced that I had gotten a promotion that he felt that he deserved and which he apparently told his family he had already received--there was no promotion at all for him or me, BTW. Enraged by this, he decided to get all stabby but proved to be as incompetent an assassin as he was a worker because he picked scissors that were duller than he was and they barely broke the skin. No, I didnt sue anyone--the guy was obviously not well and since there was no real damage and he had one of those 500 yard restraining orders, I was cool with it. Of course, the firm was apparently terrified that I would because a bunch of bigwigs arrived in my office next day to make sure I was okay and to ask if there was anything they could do. I suggested that someone could replace my shirt as the blood and hole was presumably not conducive to proper office wear. Needless to say, they didnt, which kind of pissed me off . That is the sorry saga. Of course, when I tell people that I worked in a law firm and was stabbed in the back by a colleague, they think I am dealing in metaphors. . .
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 14:46:59 +0000
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