You go into work, late from the crappy trains, your nose dripping with winter fever, and you don't expect the day to get worse. But then someone says something like "hey, did you take out the camera last night?"
I'm almost a manager, and by that, I mean that there's a guy who works generally under me and makes the same amount of money. However, the "director" part of my semi-authentic job title allows me certain benefits...like how I got to go downstairs and tell the administration that someone stole a 3,500 dollar camera from us on Monday night.
My news was met with white-faced horror, which as I would later discover was primal fear.
I work at an institution that is run by two insane women, or at least that's what I hear. I can't really vouch for their mental faculties because I rarely ever see either of them. They seem to bounce randomly between Los Angeles, New York and random opulent vacations.
So when the president of our institution is not away on some opulent vacation, she is prone to irrational anger and foot stomping.
Thus the fear.
One moment, we're all watching her scream and shout and hit things behind the safety of her office windows, the next minute I'm being called in to testify. I figured that I would just tell the facts as I knew them, but sometimes finger-pointing becomes actual finger pointing.
For the rest of the day, there was a black cloud of suspicion hanging over my head. Any student of human nature could have easily deduced that I would have never stolen a video camera without also taking the battery.
It would also be apparent that I should know how to remove a camera from a tripod without disassembling the head, but perhaps those were just be coy tactics to throw everyone off my trail.
Everyone on the staff made a point to come up to me at some point in the day and tell me how they didn't believe I had anything to do with it. As you might imagine, that only reinforced my belief that the president of our institution is now working under the assumption that I am a thief.
When the police arrived later that day to take their report, they randomly commented "Well, I'm not going to arrest anyone here, anyone could have gotten into that room." Apparently random, but she insisted on speaking with the officers privately before they came up to look at the room.
The joys of job satisfaction.
I realized today that I really should have tried to steal one of the cameras as compensation for my miserable salary. I could do amazing things with that piece of equipment, creating works far more worthwhile then anything those cameras have ever been used for in the past. However, the simple fact remains that I am not, nor have I ever been a thief.
So, while sitting in bed all night long, I carefully formulated a plan to deal with this whole situation in a quick and concise manor. Without going into detail, it hinged heavily on the bearing of my buttocks, followed by some sassy parting words like "kiss my grits".
Unfortunately, my detailed plan was thwarted today by warm apologies from the administrative staff.
It's sad when your employees feel the need to apologize for your awful behavior.
