How NOT to call the EMT

The company I work for had less than 300 employees when I went there in 1999.  This did not last long.   With continued exceptional premium growth and improved profitability, we soon outgrew our building.  In the ten years I’ve been there, we secured two additional locations for employees.  This year we are planning on consolidating in a brand new center.

Well, when the second location became our home, it included a fitness center with a shower area.  The building was directly across the street, and it became my normal lunch routine to get a little workout and quick shower in.   Often, I was the only one there at that time.

One day, I had just finished a workout.  Having worked up a good sweat, I stepped into the shower.  Hmmm…  Kinda dark  The light must not be on.  Glancing out verified the fact that the light was indeed extinguished.   I looked around, but didn’t see a light switch.  Nothing in sight.

Since I’m a genius, it was easy to surmise that there was likely a switch around the corner.  But since I’m lazy, it was much simpler to blindly reach around the corner and feel around for one.  I thought I had located it, as I felt this little plastic cover with a button on it.  But pressing the button did nothing.   Oh, well.  I could see enough and I didn’t feel like getting out and looking for a working switch, so I proceeded with my shower.

After a few minutes,  I was dried, dressed, and ready to get back to work.  As I exited the doors, I saw something curious: a squad car with an officer pulling out a little bag.  I could hear a siren in the distance.  He saw me exit the premises, and asked if there was a problem. Confused, I said “no.”

I was then informed that they received an emergency alarm from the building.

Oops.  The button…

I explained what I thought happened.  I let him in to make sure all was well.  After apologizing for being an idiot, he called off the ambulance.  

Unfortunately, I had to share this with the company, because I wasn’t sure if they’d get a bill for an emergency call.

Just one more item for my resume.

A Randomly Shared Embarrassing Moment: Wendy’s Pants

I felt like submitting a post here tonight, and wanted it to be amusing.  It seems that people generally enjoy me proving my idiocy, and there are no shortage of anecdotes to make that case, so I went back into my memory bank to tap such a tidbit.

For no particular reason, I remembered something from 1999 that, if I had any sense at all, I would leave alone in my memory and never share publicly.  Well, I am not particularly known for my sense, and so here I am…

In 1999, I made a very difficult decision.  I changed jobs, ending my career at Sentry Insurance company and moving on to Travel Guard International.  It has proved to be a wonderful decision, but at the time I was leaving behind the company that I started with right out of college.  And while there were very real reasons why I left that I won’t go into here, I liked Sentry as a company and had many good friends there.  The switch was to a smaller company (I was their first actuary) and a much less defined job.  It was  a big change for me.

So, here I am at a new company.  I had to essentially build the actuarial department from scratch.  I didn’t know hardly anybody. 

I can’t remember how far into the new job I was, but it wasn’t long.  Less than a couple weeks, if I recall correctly.  I woke up in the morning like a normally do.  I am not the brightest-eyed guy in the a.m. and I’m also not particularly selective in the clothing department.  My modus operandi is to grab the pants that are furthest to the right, and then grab the shirt that is furthest to the left that even remotely matches the pants.  And so I did.

I admit a fuzzy memory here – it was nearly 10 years ago after all.  I seem to remember thinking that the pants didn’t feel quite right.  I honestly can’t remember all the thoughts I likely had:  maybe I thought I gained weight.  Maybe I thought Wendy had bought me a new pair of pants.  Maybe I didn’t think anything, because I was tired and oblivious. 

What I do know is that I went on my merry way to work with these new people with whom I was still trying to make a good impression.

I think it was mid-morning or so.  I had stepped downstairs into the break room to read and learn the query language I would be using to pull the data I need to do my job.  (That’s thrilling, I know.)   After I had enough of that, I was walking upstairs.  As I escalated the stairs, I reached back to my back pocket.  

Huh.  No pocket?

I’ve never had a pair of pants that didn’t have a back pocket.  That’s weird.

I froze.

I was wearing a pair of Wendy’s pants.   This was not good.

Apparently, when Wendy had done the laundry, she mistakenly hung up a pair of her dress pants up in my closet.  Me, being a clueless moron, didn’t think to question why my pants fit strangely, and just accepted on faith that they were my pants.  Now, here I was, in a new company surrounded by new people who were in the process of trying to figure me out.  Wearing women’s pants.

I did what any normal man would do: I rushed to my desk and stayed there as much as physically possible for the rest of the day.  When I needed to move, I strategically chose a time where I would encounter, with maximum likelihood, nobody.

I did make one critical mistake, though.  Recognizing the humor in the situation, I picked up the phone and called a friend of mine at Sentry.  Kris had always been a good confidant.  I told her my story.  She laughed.  She then proceeded to tell everyone at Sentry the story.  I guess even confidants can’t be expected to keep something like that confidential…

Needless to say, since that time, if my pants feel a little iffy, I check for a back pocket.