Work Stories: Episode 74: Picture Perfect

Previously on Work Stories, I wrote about a drunk guy who came into the museum and made me laugh.  Right?  I think that’s what I wrote about.  Let me check that really quickly.  Yep.  That’s what I wrote about.  The guy who read something once when he was in grade three.  That guy sure made me laugh.  It was a funny moment.  You may have had to be there.  I don’t know.

This week, Work Stories will bring you another Work Story from another time at the museum that I work at.  Why?  Like I’ve said before, it’s the most recent place that I have worked, so it’s the place where I remember the most stories from.  It’s also the place where the most oddities and interesting things have happened.  I didn’t get much of that kind of stuff at any of my other jobs.  If you get more stories from a certain workplace, that’s what more of the stories will be focused on.  It only makes sense.

The Work Story this week involves two nights from this past week.  Once I get this out there, I can put it behind me and not focus on this story any longer.  At this point, even I’m annoyed by my obnoxiousness about what happened.  It has inflated my ego.  My ego isn’t that big.  Inflating it makes it feel like one of those life rafts that inflates from a tiny little square into a full raft.  It’s that much of a difference between my normal self and this one.  I need to get rid of this story.

Part 1

It’s Monday night.  The new guy and I are cleaning all of windows and doors that keep people out at night.  We’re still open, obviously, since we’re still there.  But this is a long start to closing for the night.  We have to clean the doors and windows once a week to make the place look as nice as possible when we are not there.  It’s basic cleaning stuff for a better look.

While we have one or two of the doors in place, a group of four twenty-something ladies walk up and ask me to take their picture in our giant chair.  Nice guy that I am, I say sure.  I will take their picture.  I get handed a cell phone and I walk to the sidewalk and turn around.  I point the camera phone at the women in the chair and I tap the screen so that the picture is taken.  It wasn’t the best picture.  I knew it.  They knew it.

The women look at the picture and realize what’s wrong.  The flash wasn’t on.  The picture was darker than it should have been.  They want some light to it, so they turn on the flash.  I take the camera again, and take the picture.  It looks better this time.

As the women begin to leave, they turn around.  They praise my picture, saying I took a great picture.  They thank me and then head on their way.  They go out into the world never to be seen again.  I will think nothing about what just happened.  It was a normal daily occurrence.  Someone asked me to take a picture, I took it, they said thanks, and they left.  That happens all the time.

Part 2

This part takes place on Tuesday night, the night immediately following the Monday night of the last part of the story.  That makes sense.  Tuesday comes after Monday.  I said this all took place this week.  So it would be the Tuesday right after the Monday I was already writing about.

There were three workers on for Tuesday night and it was slow, so we were doing anything to make ourselves look busier than we were.  That way, nobody would be sent home.  I decided to spend the whole night handing out balloons to the nearly nobody on the streets.  Basically, I stood there with a handful of balloons the entire shift.

While handing out balloons to the few people I actually saw, I recognized someone.  One of the people I handed balloons to was one of the women from the night before.  She looked at me, then looked at her friends and said I was the same guy who took their picture.  Or, I should say, she said “Hey!  It’s that cool guy who took our picture last night!”  Ego = inflated.

I told the new guy about what had just happened.  I told him about how I had handed out some balloons to the women from the night before and how they had called me cool.  He didn’t believe me.  In some sort of defense, I said the women had gone into the store next door.  They had.  I don’t know how that defense would help me out though.  In the end, everything worked out to my side of the story, though.

The women came back out from the store and walked up to me while I was talking to the new guy.  They told me how awesome I was and asked if they could take a picture with me.  I stood there with one woman on either side of me, and took a picture with them.  Then they thanked me and left again.

The new guy looked at me and I said “I told you so.”  He shook his head in disbelief.  And then I bragged about it all night in a joking manner.

So that’s the Work Story for this week.  My inflated ego needed to relay that to all of you.  Looking at how much I’ve written about this topic, I’m a little bit ashamed of myself.  That’s what I need, though.  I need to shame myself into not bringing up this whole thing to people.  I shouldn’t be bragging about this.  However jokingly it may be, there is no reason to brag about this.  It is a story that happened at work though, which makes it worthy of the Work Stories.  And that’s what we’re here for.  Work Stories.  And there will be another one sometime.  When?  I’m not sure.  It could be next week.  It could be two weeks.  Whenever it is, you’ll be reading about another story from my working experience.

Until then, we all go a little mad sometimes.