While I've by no means held the shittiest jobs imaginable in our fair city, the majority of them haven't been exactly dynamite. This is especially true when they're remotely related to odd catering gigs in downtown buildings. Here, I decided to document a few of those happenings. While these are mostly for posterity, they also exist to remind myself not to take them on so often. In either case, one was as follows._____________________________________
The merciful thing about the odd catering job is that sometimes things so out of the ordinary occur that they entirely make up for all the hours you thought you lost to ennui.
One day a couple of Januaries ago, I had the dullard task of greeting people by the main entrance of the Design Xchange on Bay Street. It was some weird little diplomat/business function, mostly attended by men in terrible expensive suits who don't look anybody serving them in the eye.
I was standing for a good half hour with (practically) no entertainment (save the occaisional older man with a heavy french accent trying to flirt with me*) when something quite head fucky happened to cross my path.
Quite suddenly I heard the padding of feet behind me. You know, kind of like in a shower. It seemed strangely out of place, and not something you tend to hear in a hallway of any sort, much less the one of a public establishment. The footfalls echoed curiously for a couple of seconds before I realized that they were approaching me at a rather alarming rate.
I turned around to see a wet, sweaty man running past the main desk (at the time, just around the corner behind me) and making a break for the door. He was fat and terribly ill equiped to do whatever he had set out to accomplish. Apparently whatever he was trying to get at was by pretty dubious means, and plus, he had no shirt on. That's right. He almost looked more wet that way, cos his backhair was all slicked to his skin like some feline combed after a bath. He was also quite short. Almost mediterranean in appearance, but I never really got a good look at his face. No shoes, no shirt, and heading for the door.
Next I heard, "Stop that man!!!" Though you know, I really don't think anybody was prepared to take that one on. Besides, I think they were just as stunned as I was.
The shouting voice came from a man with, wait for it, a long flailing trenchcoat and an immaculate three-piece dark suit underneath. His coat tails gave quite the show whilst he pursued his topless quarry, now out of sight and assumedly running southbound down the street. I should mention here that he also had patent leather shoes. Magnificent.
I'm quite ashamed to say I was a little too good an employee and didn't leave my post to see what would become of these two individuals. I waited to see if one of the smokers would come in with news. Indeed, a lovely younger man with tailored attire that cost more than my parents country house told me he saw the topless man being caught by the trenchcoat. To my disapointment, the topless offender wasn't brought in the way he had exited, and I never saw him again.
After futher enquiries, I gathered that said man had apparently climbed in through a window. Where he had lost half his clothes remains a mystery, but still, what a poorly planned execution. Perhaps I'm just trying to convince myself that it really didn't matter what his plans were... Fat. Wet. Caught. I wonder if he ever reported back to the big boss.
*But you know, that's so balls. I'm used to that.
