So a strange thing happened at work today...

I wouldn't be sharing this in a public forum like this except 2 things: 1.) I don't think anybody on this coast reads this blog and 2.) this is so ludicrous, i can't fathom not sharing it.

I won't use real proper nouns in case this actually does get read by someone.

So, I go into work today and my boss is like "We've got a story to share with you." But first, some exposition:

So we open every weekday morning at 8 am. Since we have a separate kitchen and we make all our sandwiches and most of our salads from scratch everyday, our kitchen staff shows up at the kitchen at 6 in the morning. Then, the person who's the opener shows up at the store at 7 in the morning and opens the store. One of our delivery people makes a delivery from the kitchen to the store at 7 in the morning and the person who opened preps the store so that it can be opened at 8 (brews coffee, labels the food, hangs up the cookies, etc.)

Ok, story time (this all happened before I got into work):

So this morning, our delivery dude (we'll call him... Ned) comes at 7 with his shipment. Ned comes to the store and he sees the opener dude (we'll call him... Jim). According to Ned, Jim was not "dressed for work." (Ned, like most of our kitchen staff, has a language barrier issue. This is the story we got from Ned.) Jim was dressed in a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and looked, according to Ned, like a "bum."

So, the next employee to arrive at the store (we'll call him... Fred) comes at 8 every morning (either 8 or 8:30, I'm not sure. I work night shift so I don't show up until like 2pm). He notices that the store is not open yet. The lights are off and there's no sign of life. He goes and asks the security people in the lobby (our store neighbors the lobby of an MIT building and is, in fact, owned by MIT) if it's a holiday or if they know what happened to the store, namely Jim. They say they have no idea and have been getting questions from people about whether or not we're open.

So Fred, puzzled, goes to the kitchen (it's about a 2 block walk) and finds the kitchen staff. They have no idea why the store's not open yet either. Fred calls the store and nobody picks up so he calls one of our bosses (we'll call him... Owner Sam). Owner Sam drives over while Fred gets the spare keys from the kitchen staff and walks back to open the store. Owner Sam and Fred start to go through the opening the store rituals (brewing coffee, labeling food, hanging up cookies, etc.) when Owner Sam goes to the safe to put money into the registers (we takes them out every night and put money into the safe). He notices that there's no money in the safe. At all. And he sees the receipts and the closing sheets I fill out every night (when I take the money out of the register and put it into the safe) from Friday but there's no actual money.

So, it turns out that Jim stole all the money and took off. Now, just so you know, Jim's the first person to get hired by Owner Sam and his partners (Owner.. Betty and Barney [they're married]). Owners Sam, Betty, and Barney hired Jim from day one so he's been working there for 2 years now. Jim's kind of ADD and OCD [and I think bi-polar] but I never thought he's just flip out and bail.

To make matters worse, Jim's girlfriend is living with him now. She is also an employee of ours (inter-office romance... another bad thing about it?) but she's currently on... (wait for it...) maternity leave. YES! Jim's girlfriend just had Jim's son! Jim's a young-ish man and that's what Owner Betty thinks drove Jim to just realize one day that he's not ready for this and just bail. Jim's girlfriend, who we talked to, said that...

[Sorry, give me a minute. I'm just trying to remember if anybody has a link to this blog from work. If you do, don't share this post just yet... Thanks.]

Anyway, Jim's girlfriend said that she sent Jim out on Sunday afternoon to get something for the baby (I think juice...?). He came back at 1 in the morning (almost 12 hours later) and told her something about getting into a car accident. So, speculate what you want from that all. I have my own suspicions about what happened to Jim but I won't go into it.

Suffice it to say, we're all worried about Jim (more so about his girlfriend). Nothing's actually happened yet in terms of contacting anybody or anything (aside from calling his girlfriend). We're all still in the dark about stuff and we don't really know what's going on yet specifically.

Think about it though. Jim just cashed his chips and got the hell outta Dodge. I mean, he folded his hand and cashed outta the game. This is all relatively new to me. I think I grew up in a somewhat sheltered life in that nobody I knew in high school or college would even consider this sequence of events as a possibility in life. I don't think I can actually fathom the magnitude of just bailing like this. Anyway, just thought I'd share because this was... a wacky day, to say the least.