The Injury

While rehashing the nightmare of the 2001 Big XII Championship game and Chris Simms' "finger injury", I couldn't help but think about the sweet little day porter that used to work at one of my properties. 

Suprisingly enough, when I'm not having Football Girl adventures, you can usually find me at my job, which is managing commercial real estate. 

There's something to be said about a Property Manager.  It's a fairly thankless job.  If you're a bad Property Manager, tenants hate you, are constantly annoyed at you and call angrily and often about all the things you are doing badly.  If you're good at it, tenants only call you when something is wrong and they want you to fix it.  Either way, generally tenants aren't calling their Property Managers up to shoot the breeze and tell them how smoothly office life is going.

To summarize, a good Property Manager - much like hot water - is something you don't even think about until there is a problem.

A couple of years ago, I was working in the management office on-site at one of my properties.  My boss was at lunch and I was in the office alone when a nice accounting lady from one of the 11th floor offices came down with a question about her rent statement. 

This particular 11th floor tenant was widely known throughout the building for having a rude, irrational and downright mean office manager.  We'll call her "Laura."  Laura constantly screamed at everyone who didn't read her mind.  She also berated anyone who got in her way.  She yelled at our staff, the postal carrier, other tenants that didn't exit the elevator quickly enough and even the tenant next door for "cooking smelly food".  She was so mean to her staff that they lived in fear of mistakes, knowing Laura would publicly humilate and loudly critisize them if any were made.  Just about everyone who worked in the building had seen Laura screaming at some poor soul for a greivous error such as not throwing out the coffee filter or forgetting to replace the paper in tray 2.

(By the way, Laura is her real name.  She's such a horrible person that I feel no need to protect her identity or reputation.)

But back to the story.  When the nice accountant lady came down, she explained she was new and wasn't exactly sure she understood the rent statement.  She had a check with her, and when we went over the statement I explained to her that the check was only partially correct: since she was new, she didn't realize that the office had expanded a few years back, causing the suite to generate two monthly rent statements.  Since her check contained the payment for only one of those statements, I printed her the second one and she went back up to the 11th floor.

I know, exciting stuff, right?

Not ten minutes later, Laura came tearing into the office, guns blazing.  "NO ONE REFUSES MY RENT CHECK!" she screamed.

"Huh?"  I'm in property management.  I love rent checks...they help me supply the building with frivolous things like...electricity.  I'd accept a check written by OJ Simpson if I thought I could float it long enough to pay the water bill.

"NO ONE REFUSES MY RENT CHECK!  THIS CHECK IS GOOD!  LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING...!"

While she threw her tantrum, I tried to understand why she was so mad.  From what I could piece together, the poor new accountant had gone back up to the office and explained to Laura that I had said I would "need another check."  Laura, having no idea how to pay the rent and not bothering to gather the proper information, immediately assumed that I had rejected the check because it was written from a "dba" sub-account of the office.

"...YOU TAKE THIS CHECK EVERY MONTH!  WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU THAT YOU'RE SUDDENLY REJECTING THIS CHECK?! ARE YOU STUPID?"

After one attempt to explain what the problem was, I realized there was no point.

"DON'T YOU DARE INTERRUPT ME!"

At this point, Laura was so angry that she slammed the check on my desk with a slap so hard it blew other papers off.  She then came around so we were both behind the desk and bent down, wagging her finger in my face, scolding me like I was a child.  As she continued to throw her tantrum, she worked herself into such a tizzy that while jabbing her finger at me, she lost control and poked me in the face.

For one split second, we were both stunned into silence.  Laura, realizng she had pretty much just assaulted me, paused in her tirade just long enough to take one step back before resuming her yelling and finger waving.

When she felt she had said enough, she huffed from the office, promising to "TELL MY BOSS TO TEACH ME TO NEVER REFUSE A CHECK FROM HER AGAIN."

As the door slammed she told me "I'LL HAVE YOUR JOB OVER THIS!"

I stared after her shocked and confused. "What the Hell had just happened?!" and "This woman is legitimately crazy!" were thoughts that ran through my head. I breifly considered calling my boss, but she so rarely got out of the office that I felt bad and decided to wait until she got back.

As I tried to shake it off (literally, I shook my head like a wet dog) I looked up and saw "Lizzie", our sweet day porter, eyes wide, standing next to my doorway.  When I realized she had been there the whole time I was glad that 1)  Laura didn't scream at and poke her in the face and 2) someone else had seen what just happened, as surely this story would have sounded made-up.

"Miss Beth, are you okay?  That woman is crazy.  Please to call Dan?"  Before I could answer, she was picking up the radio to call Dan, our security guard.  I stopped her, telling her it was fine.  I didn't think Laura would be coming back anytime soon.

We kind of laughed about what had just happened, but Lizzie knew I was still a bit shaken when I asked her to lock the door behind her when she left.  She called my boss, Ruth, at lunch to let her know what had happened.  Ruth, hearing the story in frantic Spanglish cut her lunch short and headed back to the office.

When Ruth got a hold of the whole story, we started the procedure for filling in our upper-management and corporate Human Resources Director, who just happened to be Debra.  Additionally, my sister was a Director at the company.  The story, while not really funny, quickly made the rounds at the corporate office and became the subject of much hilarity.  The asset manager on the Property, "Da Bears" called Ruth to ask her if he should get me a bat.

Ruth, ever the good boss, sent a letter to Laura and her boss (who was rarely in the office and traveled overseas frequently) explaining Laura was not to come to the office anymore, and if she needed assistance, Ruth would come up to the 11th floor. But it didn't really matter.  Because of the incident, the absentee boss started asking around to his employees and was made aware of some of the crazy things Laura was prone to doing (not limited to face poking).  She was fired a few weeks later.  I got great joy from deleting her building access card and having the locks changed on her suite.

In all reality, what happened should not have been funny. In fact, it's slightly embarrassing how much the situation rattled me: for the rest of the afternoon, every time I heard the elevator ring on our floor I was visibly jumpy. I know Debra and Ruth were concerened that I had been so upset by the situation.

But for God's sake...a crazy lady poked me in the face! Who else does that kind of thing happen to?!  Had Lizzie not seen it happen, I'm pretty sure people would have thought I was pathological!

Because I was not hurt, we were dealing with a tenant and Laura has been noted as crazy before, everyone, including me, thought it was best not to call the police. Secretly though, deep down, a very childish part of me really wanted to...I had a hidden wish to see her led away in handcuffs to mean-person-jail.  In order to wrap up and document the incident, Debra asked the three of us, me, Ruth and Lizzie, to fill out incident reports.

Later that afternoon, Debra was compiling the incident reports and couldn't help but laugh when she read Lizzie's.  Knowing it would make me feel better, she emailed me a copy. In fact, in the years since, Kacie, Debra and I have on more than one occasion sent it to each other for a chuckle. 

God bless sweet Lizzie.  She conveyed the details of the incident as best as she could in English.  For this paragraph alone, I will always have a special place for her in my heart...I will remember her when a tenant screams at me, and think of her when I am scared:

"I was cleaning the manager office when mrs. Laura came to this office and she went to desk’s beth and she was screaming to beth all the time, I could see when she slammed the paper on the desk and she was injury with the finger beth’s face. I watched everything from frame’s door. I felt fear and I couldn’t call the security guard, just I waited that this woman leave the manager’s office."

...and everytime Chris Simms injures his finger, a Lizzie gets her wings.