There is this one gentleman in the office, who seems to never wash his hands. He wears a suit, his hair looks great. He is a handsome guy, but whenever I see him, I remember this one time he came out of the stall, and then out of the door, and then today again…
I use the towel to touch the doorknob for a while now… for obvious reasons.
So when I went to get a coffee today, around four pm or so. The man in the nice suit, who does not seem to want to wash his hands happened to also go out of the building to get a smoke. I do not feel so bad now, at least. The smoke probably kills a good percentage of the bacteria he leaves on his hands. (The cigarette will be a really good one to blame, once he happens to somehow injure himself via his bad hygiene…)
One of the ashtrays outside of the building was smoking too. One of the cigarettes must have set some thrown out receipt on fire, and so there was a general smell of burning paper in the air. And yes, some smoke.
I went to get the coffee. There is a little place across 8th avenue, and their coffee is not so bad, even though they do not have Moby Dick symbols on their paper cups. (They also give me two cups every time, and then these cups make very nice building blocks for paper sculptures.)
As I was returning to the office, back on the same path, there is was, obviously, the ashtray, now much more smokey. People standing around, staring, smoking their cigarettes. The smoke somehow heavy actually.
A security guard, in his day-glow vest and his walkietalkie was calling the fire department. For help. I could hear the syrens, the firehouse is not very far…
He kept them very well informed: “Yes, we have heavy smoke here, heavy smoke.”
This was not heavy smoke, it was a bunch of paper really happy to be finally on fire. I walked up to the ashtray, took off the lid of my coffee cup and slowly poured some of my java onto the little flames, extinguishing them instantly.
“…yes, we had a representative sent here and he put coffee on top of the fire, extinguishi….” I heard the security guy speak into his device, as I walked into the building through the new york airlock called revolving door…
I actually thought that I had spilled most of my coffee on the fire, but as it turned out, it was not all that bad.
Oh, and I do not think that the security guy is a bad person. He was probably not allowed to touch an extinguisher, or do anything by himself. So I don’t blame him. And neither do I blame the man who does not wash his hands.
It is a bit lame that I would write about such a silly incident here, I know…
Good thing nobody got hurt.