Doing the Right Thing?
Today at work I was talking to a co-worker when we heard a weird sort of sound. A small crashing/breaking noise. Not like glass, but like…. I poked my head out the door to see what the noise had been.
A-ha! A cell phone.
In at least 10 discrete pieces.
I started to pick up the pieces thinking someone had dropped it coming out the elevator and had missed the fact their phone had fallen and been smashed into pieces.
As I was bent over picking up another piece a man walked up to me and said “That’s my phone. I got mad and threw it. My wife’s in the building cheating on me and she won’t answer her phone.” He seemed a little agitated.
Oooookaaaay. I avoided making eye-contact with the crazy man and handed him the pieces I’d picked up. I also vaguely wondered how you could carry on affair in my building.
I watched him get in the elevator and went back into our office to report what had just happened.
I suggested that maybe an agitated man mad enough to throw a $300 cell phone across the lobby might be a potential hazard to the woman he was looking for and anyone unlucky enough to be near her.
We opted to call the Capitol police and I had to share my story and a description of the guy with 2 police officers.
Obviously, everything turned out ok. They found the guy in the cafeteria in a much less agitated state. He claims to have tried to “flip open” the phone and flipped it right out of his hands. He’s fine, the wife/girlfriend was fine.
I felt kinda stupid telling the police about it. Did I do the wrong thing?
From my point of reference I had man claim to have thrown a phone in anger because someone is cheating on him. Clearly since nothing bad happened I read the situation wrong and some jealous guy with a hot temper got grilled by the Capitol Police. Oh, and my name is now in some police database. Nice.
I once called the police...
because I didn’t recognize a piece of mail at work.
This was pre-9/11, but during the height of the Unabomber and I worked in a research lab.
A big box came with no return address and addressed to one of the researchers.
I was confused by it, and the handwriting on the address label was bad. I asked around, and no one was expecting anything. We’d been told to involve the police in such cases.
They came, several of them, with a bomb sniffing dog. Seriously. It was a book sent as a favor from a colleague. Okay, so my face was kind of red on that one.
Or the time I smelled gas at my parents house and called the gas company to check for a leak?
Nothing. Gas fumes in the attached garage.
EVERYONE cheats in your building!!!!
Serisouly, I knew about 20 people having affairs with co-workers when I was there!
But that aside, of COURSE you did the right thing! Who knows who will go postal and open fire or whatever when they are that mad. “Crime of passion” means something.
I called the cops when I was in Vegas and heard a woman getting beaten/potenitally killed in the room across the hall from me. It was SO scary! I was actually crying just hearing it happen. But I would never want to be the person who turns away, averts my eyes and ears and doesn’t help someone who needs help.
It’s always right to help! Good for you!