Oddities in the Office

Posted on December 9, 2010

Typically, the Areyvut office is a quiet and laid back sort of place.  It’s not often that guests show up unannounced or without some sort of appointment (unless these individuals are related in some way to either me or Daniel).  However, once in a while we find ourselves chatting with people who mosey in for random and often odd reasons. 

There was the man from American Express who chatted with us for nearly 45 minutes about his children, gave us a boat-load of free pens and then returned the following week.  (We’re still not quite sure why he returned, but in a weird sort of way, it was nice to see him.)  The most likely unannounced visitors are usually peddling their wares…either baseball tickets (which need to be purchased in the next 3 minutes to get the deal they are offering), watercolor pictures of New York City (usually in matching frames) or the guy from the diner down the road trying to give us a menu…I don’t think he totally understands the concept of “kosher” yet.

But today certainly took the cake.  Even Daniel will admit, that generally when these individuals enter the office, he is usually not present for one reason or another.  (In the case of the guy from American Express, Daniel wasn’t here for the second go-around.  It took me nearly 1 hour to get him to leave by not so subtly pointing towards my work and saying that I had to get back to it.)  Today, I heard the all too familiar knock on the door.  After answering with my typical “Come in!”, a man entered.  I was immediately caught off guard because it did not appear that he was trying to sell anything.  This boggled my mind as I simply couldn’t think of another reason to have visited the Areyvut office today. 

I asked if I could help him, but he said he was pretty sure he had to wait for “the man” and pointed towards Daniel (who was of course, on the phone and left me in sort of an awkward situation with our guest).  I naturally assumed that Daniel knew this individual, and tried to entertain him as best I could.  I soon gave up because he clearly didn’t feel like chatting with me.  Instead he chose to ask me questions about the calendar hanging on my wall.  I found it particularly strange when he asked if I got one, referring to the calendar.  Wasn’t it obvious?  It was, after all, hanging on my wall.  Then he asked if all of the pictures on the calendar were the same and I knew I was in trouble because I nearly laughed in his face…Daniel had to get off the phone…quickly.

As it turns out, this man, who I have now sort of poked fun at in this blog entry, came by for very noble reasons.  Apparently, Daniel had purchased tickets to some event at some point and was due some money in return as part of a promotion for bringing a certain amount of people.  This man brought Daniel his money, albeit several months later.  As my Grandma always says “better late than never”.  Yes, it was weird to have this man in the office for what felt like a lot of time, but ultimately, he was here to follow through on a promise and that’s important no matter how late in the game it is.

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