My manager is easily one of the smartest people I know, which is what makes this story pure awesomeness in a bottle.
I went on an appointment with her last week, to a town that was 2 hours away. Great meeting, they bought us lunch and we left with a warm & fuzzy feeling that we would land the account.
Back in the office, I start booting up my computer and my manager pops into my cube. Still wearing her jacket and white as a ghost, she flings car keys on my desk. "What's up?" I ask her, eyeballin' the keys and all the shit hanging off them. Funny, I didn't know she was a Yankees fan.
"Whose keys are these?!" she asks, her voice ending in that high note of panic.
"I don't know. Aren't they..." I start to answer. She cuts me off. "THIS ISN'T MY JACKET!"
Silence. Oh boy. We look at each other and the realization sets in: We've got someone's car keys, and their jacket, AND we're 120 miles away. Shit shit shit shit SHIT.
I immediately fall into "every man for himself"-mode. "You took someone else's coat? What are you going to do?" Notice I how made it very clear how NOT involved I was in this situation. "I don't know, I have to call them," she said, and by the look on her face, her mind was obviously racing.
Frazzled, she walked back into her office still wearing someone else's jacket and taking their keys with her. The humor in the situation starts setting in, and now I've started laughing so hard I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes. Not one to let anyone off the hook, I followed her into her office.
"Hey L.," I say. "Didn't you kinda commit a felony? I mean, you didn't actually steal the car itself, but you took the keys. Isn't that intent or something?" And I'm laughing so hard at this point I had to hang onto her bookcase. She's dialing her phone furiously, saying, "No one called...I can't believe no one called...How do I get in touch with them? What am I going to do?!?!?!" Always the supportive one, as I wiped the tears streaming down my face I said, "They're probably too busy filling out a police report for their stolen shit. And I can tell you what account we won't be writing in July!"
At which point she threw me out of her office. Work ethic completely out the window, I proceeded to walk around the department to tell everyone what happened.
What really put the finishing touches on the story was that when the owner was tracked down, it ended up being the same woman who walked us out of the meeting. How the hell does that even happen? How can you stand around for 10 minutes, talking to someone who is wearing YOUR COAT, and not even notice? Not even to say, "Hey, I have a coat just like yours!"
It was definitely a life situation where I was at the right place, at the right time. I also proved that when the shit goes down, if it's funny enough, don't even bother asking me for help. I am useless.
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