a day in the office

I just got into work, and a minute ago the office landlord came through the door. His name is Mr. Miller, and he's about 75 years old (I think older actually). I had my hood was up when he came in and he said "are you cold in here?". He walked straight to the thermostat to see what it was set on. "72" he says. I was immediatly reminded of last year, when I used to set it at 80, and thought "phew"! I said I was fine, and that I had just come in from outside and still a little chilled from the cold air.

"Will you do me a favor" he asks. "Sure!" I said. (Usually he asks me to make sure the hall lights are off when I leave, or that the door is locked). "Will you show me how to use that machine that you and Thom (my boss) got rid of a little while ago"? OH DEAR. He was referring to the printer/fax/copy/scanner that I had wars with a few months ago. I swear he watches people walk to the dumpster and scavanges whatever we put in! I hesitated and said "I'm not sure if I can do that, did you fix it?". "Oh, it's broken?" he asked. LOL. I said "yeah, it jams up real bad, I don't know if it would be worth your time to try to get it working". I could sense his dissapointment. I hated to let him down, but last time we had a less-than-fabulous printer (before the one he's talking about) it sat here in our office for about a month. Mr. Miller came in when my boss was here and asked if he could have it. I had told Thom before that it was a power surge that took out this particular printer. It was dead, and there was no way to revive it. He obviously either didn't remember, or didn't believe me, because he told Mr. Miller to have it, and to come back when I was around and I would give him the paperwork to get it all set up. Ugh! When he came back, I handed him the CD that came with the printer with the software/drivers etc on it, and he said "what do I do with this?". Giving up, I told him politely that maybe his son could help him set it up, to which he said "yeah ok" and walked out the door. Haha. That may sound like a mean thing to do but you have no idea how hard it is to get through to these people sometimes!

Well then he started telling me a story about how he was in a store yesterday about to ring out, and because he's in there a lot he knew the employees fairly well. He said to the woman behind the counter "where's the black lady that normally works here?". He then says to me "I don't know how you would have handled this situation..". Apparently, the lady behind him was IRRATE that he had used the work "black" and began to give him a speech about how he couldn't do that, and was going to be in trouble, and he was only to refer to people as African American. WOW! I didn't know people were still out there like that (am I being ignorant here?). I told Mr. Miller that there are some people that will do anything to feel like they have power, and that as long as he didn't give her his name and address, he had nothing to worry about! Lol. Anyway, as Mr. Miller finally walked toward the door, on his way out he said "turn up the heat if you need it!".

Aaaaw, what a nice old man. Such a pleasant surprise to hear someone tell me to turn the heat UP! It's freezing outside (29 deg right now). It's too early to be that cold!