All in a Day's Work

Work has kept me very busy and away from the Blogosphere.  I hope you all are doing well and I'm sorry I'm behind on reading your blogs.  I'm looking forward to taking next week off and catching up on your blogs and enjoying the holiday season at home.

Speaking of work...this is the electronic whiteboard my work group uses so our boss can keep track of us.   We had a snowstorm last night and into this afternoon and everyone who is not on vacation  chose to work from home today. 

I bet you can tell which icon represents me on the whiteboard.

Funny story about the bank robber icon.  It belongs to our boss.

One Monday morning Wiley Coyote came into the office and found a surprising voice message awaiting him.  We all gathered around his phone to listen and were quite shocked.   It was a conversation amongst  three bank robbers who didn't realize they were being recorded.  There was a lot of static and garbled words, but we heard them talking excitedly about a large amount of cash.  The male robber said, "Here, count the money" and we heard another start counting "One hundred, two hundred, three hundred.....this is a lot of money!"   We heard the male in charge clearly exclaim, "We're bank robbers!".   Then a female said, "I've got the cash between my legs."

Wiley Coyote called the police.

A uniformed officer came to our office and went to Wiley Coyote's desk (he sits right next to me) and listened to the recording and said, "Don't erase that.  I'm going to call a couple of  Dicks to come listen to this."  No kidding, that's really what he said. 

Within the hour two plain clothes detectives showed up at Wiley Coyote's desk.  They listened to the voice message several times, recorded it on a device of their own, and asked Wiley Coyote lots of questions like:

• Do you recognize the phone number?  (The voicemail system had recorded the incoming cell phone number)
• Do you recognized any of the voices?
• Do you know anyone who might commit a crime like this?
• Where do you live?
• How long have you worked here?
• Who has your work number? 
• Who calls you at this number?

There had been a string of bank robberies in our city and the latest one had occurred that very weekend.  This was quickly becoming a hot lead.

The detectives left but soon returned, escorted by the facility manager to our boss' office this time.  They had discovered the caller's cell phone belonged to our boss!   It was getting late and one by one we each left to go home, wondering what was going on behind our boss' closed door.  Could our boss be a bank robber?    He doesn't seem like the type.  But how well do any of us really know the people we work with day-in and day-out? Or maybe his cell phone had been stolen during the weekend and used by the bank robbers.

The next day we were relieved to see our boss arrive at the office. 

He told us the detectives asked him lots of questions and then asked him to listen to the recording.   They asked him if he recognized the voices.  He didn't recognize any of the voices.  Then they asked him if he had lost his cell phone.  He said no, he had it with him.  They asked if they could have his cell phone and look at his call history.  He handed it over to them, unsure of why he was being questioned.  They showed him the call history that listed a call to Wiley Coyote's office number on Saturday.  Our boss was dumbfounded.  They asked him if he had loaned his cell phone to anyone.  No, he had it with him all weekend.  Then the detectives asked our boss to tell them exactly what he did on Saturday.  He said, "....my wife and my son and I went to the Mazda dealer to look at cars.  Then we went to the bank and withdrew some cash to purchase a car, and then we went back to the dealership...."  Then the light bulb went on. 

Our boss had his cell phone in his pocket and it accidentally "butt-dialed" Wiley Coyote's desk phone number in the contacts list as he and his family were walking to their car in the bank parking lot.  The voice messaging system picked up and recorded the conversation between our boss, his wife, and their young son a they got into their car and began driving back to the car dealership.   They handed the cash to their son in the back seat  so he could practice counting in hundreds.  What wasn't recorded clearly was their young son asking, "Can anyone walk into a bank and ask for all this money?"   His dad jokingly replied, "No, we're bank robbers!"   Our boss said it's a good thing the voice message ended before we all heard his reply when his wife said she had the cash between her legs.

This happened during a very busy, stressful time at our office and we all appreciated the good laugh.  One of my co-workers replaced our boss' white board image of Mr. Slate (Fred Flintstone's boss) with the bank robber image and it has stuck.

The string of local bank robberies came to an end and I don't recall if they ever caught the real bandits.

Wiley Coyote is still employed, although we teased him that he shouldn't expect a raise this year.